Bad behaviour on SA's roads

2004-11-30 10:16

I've had to stop driving in the fast lane on the highway. I started to have genuine concerns that I was going to get myself killed.

The behaviour that was hurtling me towards an early, silk-trimmed coffin was my tendency to get drawn into the grimly aggressive dicing game that the other drivers play.

I'm not adopting a holier-than-thou, "it wuzzen me" stance on the matter - I've been right there with the worst of them; thin lipped, tense jawed, on the tail of the person in front of me, refusing to look left or right for fear of making eye contact with any people who might be expecting some basic human consideration from me.

I'm generally a fairly moderate person. I have a continental temper, but for the most part, I try to spend my days being courteous and generous to my fellow man.

This attitude of selfishness does not come naturally to me - so where did it spring from? Allow me to paint for you the few scenarios that exemplify life on the South African roads. See if you recognise them.

Onramp mania

You're queuing in traffic, waiting to turn right onto a highway onramp. You've been there some time, it being rush hour. When you've finally made your way to the front, as you are about to execute your turn, a minibus taxi blunders across your path from the middle, going-straight lane.

You have to slam on brakes, because if you don't, you will drive into him. He doesn't have insurance, so your chances of coming out well from that accident are slim.

The cold hard shoulder

Once you're on the highway, you try to merge with traffic. Aside from the people who pretend not to see you so that they don't have to let you in, you're also beleaguered from behind by taxis flying along in the emergency lane, who don't see any reason to try and merge - especially since no one wants them to anyway.

The invisible minibus

Our Metro police are very visible. Their orange striped cars decorate our highways and create a very definite police presence. And this does have the very real benefit of slowing the traffic. In rush hour. From 40 kilometres an hour down to 20.

People's guilty complexes, probably because they consistently do behave so horribly, encourages them to slam on brakes at the mere sight of a Metro car, even if they were well below the speed limit to start with.

On top of this, the minibus taxis, in fear of persecution, all execute rapid lane changes to the fast lane, from which the police car will be least able to pull them over. You can almost see their drivers wishing themselves invisible. The result is mayhem. The busy highway is congested for kilometres.

Living in the fast lane

There are a couple of behaviours that driving in the fast lane brings to the fore in even the most temperate of citizens.

There's the person who drives at 90, in the fast lane, with no one in front of her. This turns you into the light-flashing, sit-on-her tail, aggressor.

When you finally accept that she believes that the fast lane is hers to do with what she will, you change back into the adjacent lane to overtake on her left (a no-no if you've read the signs) and what does she do? She speeds up.

She uses all the horsepower that her luxury car affords her to speed up for just long enough to ensure that you are stuck behind some truck or bus in the middle lane, and have to once again pull out behind her and stick to her chosen speed of 90.

He came from behind

The antagonism that you feel when faced with this woman's actions has nothing on what you feel when someone comes at you from behind.

You're driving at just over the speed limit in the fast lane, but this is obviously not good enough for the person behind you.

Instead of giving you a bit of space to move over, he sits on your tail, flashing his lights, swerving from side to side and only just avoiding slamming into you.

You put your indicator on to show your intention of getting out of his way, but he doesn't slow down, meaning that you have to maintain a speed too high to allow you to merge with the much slower lane on your left.

The lights, the lights

In congested traffic, only a couple of cars can get across the intersection in one change of a traffic light. The desperation not to be left behind sees drivers bolting into the intersection as the lights turn to orange, leaving them stranded there, since the traffic in front of them isn't moving forward.

This means that the perpendicular traffic can't move forward either, until the next orange light, and the frustration all round continues to propagate this ridiculous cycle.

If any of the above has struck you as typical behaviour, of which you have been either the executor or the victim (but probably both, in your time), then you are, as I am, a fine example of what causes the ludicrous and unacceptable death toll on our roads.

This isn't an international problem. In China the Zen-like meanderings of drivers on roads far more congested than our own bear testimony to a commitment to the greater good.

There is havoc on the roads in places like Egypt, where every driver hangs out of the window of their car swearing loudly and colourfully at the other drivers, and yet, somehow, in the midst of all of this, good nature prevails, and everyone gets to their destination unscathed.

So, I have decided to fight a battle of one against the scourge of aggression on South African roads. I don't drive in the fast lane - that's only for overtaking in exceptional circumstances.

I take a deep breath when taxis swerve in front of me and I wish them well on their way to their destination. I stop on orange to allow the waiting traffic to turn. I try to be aware of people to my left and right, and slow down to allow them to merge with a smile.

Now, if I can only suppress the urge to smack the daylights out of drivers who take advantage of my new Zen approach to driving without so much as a meagre smile, or raised hand of acknowledgement.

Serena de Souza thanks the stars she can't afford a BMW.

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