To stop or to go...that is the question...

From a cold and a bit windy Johannesburg in Gauteng I greet you with chattering teeth...

Today I would like to address a very serious issue... To stop, or to go and take that chance... At a stop-sign or a traffic light that is...

With this issue I am afraid that I can't point the finger at anyone in particular. In fact there are very, very few drivers in South Africa who are not guilty of this awesomely stupid crime, me included.

What I am referring to is when the traffic light goes orange and your car is still two hundred metres away and you speed up so you can still make it over before the red light strikes...

Meantime, when you reach the crossing you are doing ninety kilometres per hour but the light has already turned red. In my opinion you have absolutely no excuse for crossing the red light. You saw the orange way ahead of time. You should have stopped...

The funny thing is, while you are speeding over the red light at ninety, a taxi driver starts to cross in front of you because, in stead of waiting for his green, he was looking at the opposite traffic-lights turning orange and started to cross without paying any attention to any other cars doing stupid things.

Now you plough into him from the right...

Of course, you die instantly, because it doesn't matter what safety features your car has, at those speeds they don't count anymore... Of course, all of the people in the taxi, on the side that you hit at ninety, die instantly from the sheer force of the impact shattering their bodies like a contained explosion...

Now, no matter how you look at this, you are also to blame...

What I'm trying to get at here is that if we all just shed this attitude of trying to be first in line, this sickly attitude of entitlement that we all still have left over from "you-know-what" that ended in 1996... If we all just relax, give eachother a chance, and NOT TAKE ANY CHANCES!...we will all be so much safer on the roads of this amzing country of ours...

And then... That taxi driver that started to cross on the orange light, a lot of us do that too...

Now listen, if I happen to tread on anyone's toes with anything that I write on this site, I would like to say this: Get over it...

If you feel offended by anything on this site then you are one of the guilty ones...

A few weeks ago, on my scooter, I was driving past a school that is on my route home. Just as I was driving over a speed-hump, a blue BMW came flying past me over the hump. I say flying because he was in the air with speed. I know he was in the air because a BMW's side mirrors are not high enough for my elbow to touch when I'm on my scooter... But...this BMW hit my right elbow with it's left side mirror...

Lets just get the facts straight:

1. I was on a scooter
2. BMW was going fast enough to be airborne from the (very shallow) speed-hump
3. Close enough to me to hit my elbow as it passed me

As it happens, on my route, I saw the the BMW pulling into a driveway after it had disappeared for a while on a different route. I was not happy. So I pulled over and got onto the kerb and confronted the driver of the car as he waited for his automatic gate to open.

I asked him if he realised that he had almost just killed me...?

Take a guess at what the justification of his actions came down to...

He said: "I almost killed you... but I didn't kill you... so what?

Goodness gracious me!

I have made peace with that incident and just thank my Creator that He was looking out for me...

But...

From the overwhelming condemning evidence pertaining to driver-attentiveness, driver-consideration, respect for road-law, respect for other drivers and motorcyclists, I put it to you that most of us have the same attitude on the road as the guy in the BMW...

Think about it...