'It's a jungle out there'

2008-08-25 11:23

Chris Moerdyk

I have this cunning marketing solution to the problem of road rage. It involves doing what marketers do best and that is to completely ignore reality and work on perception.

The first step is to accept that South Africa is not a first world traffic environment of well behaved drivers kept in check by rigidly enforced rules and regulations. It is third world motoring mayhem at its worst. Not quite as chaotic as Cairo but getting there fast.

A situation where rules are there to be broken and the big trick is simply not to get caught.

A country in which economic considerations outweigh road death statistics.

Now, this doesn't mean to say that I am going to start breaking the rules whenever I can. I am simply not going to accept that the rules of the road are things that are imposed upon me, but rather instruments I can use to keep myself from being wiped out by other road users. Because, when you think of it, a lot of road rage is caused by powerlessly watching other drivers blatantly breaking the rules.

Secondly - and this is the nub of my really cunning plan - every time I get into my car I am going to imagine that I am in the Kruger National Park.

Herd mentality

I am going to drive at a pace sedate enough not to run over or have my paintwork damaged by all those crazy guinea fowl that always seem to wait for an oncoming vehicle before scurrying across the road. Like all those pedestrians who dice with death on a daily basis trying to run across motorways.

To me, there are no buses. Only elephants. No big trucks. Only Rhinos.

No combi taxis. Only herds and herds of impala, mindlessly springing hither then thither and rushing about desperately looking for somewhere to commit suicide.

There will be no more idiots hogging the fast lane at two miles a fortnight. Only the odd warthog trotting along in the same direction as I am, oblivious to all but its own strange little world.

There will be no more cyclists riding five abreast. Only waterbuck with circular white saddle marks on their bums. No more delivery motorbikes. Only wild dogs with their strange but fascinating penchant for snapping at car tyres.

I've been trying it for a while now and it works a treat. I just go into bush driving mode.

I feel as if I am on my way back to "camp" after a day of animal spotting and bird watching and all I want is a cool shower and a whacking great whisky.

In the kind of mood where I couldn't care less if I never saw another rhino with or without its prehensile lip, nor if I ever spotted another wailing cisticola as long as I lived. I've been in that kind of mood when I've come up behind the umpteenth herd of elephant standing in the middle of the road.

Compromise

I don't lean out of the window and yell; "what are you waiting for, you bunch of morons? Do you think you own the @#*& road or something?" and then start thumping the steering wheel with such passion I can't hold a golf club for a week.

No, I simply assume that elephants don't have the foggiest notion about the concept of motorised road transport. My lack of road rage in this case has nothing to do with the fact that when you abuse an elephant it tends to stomp on you because that's what buses and trucks do as well. But, somehow, it hasn't prevented me in the past from letting rip with a string of ripe invective in their direction.

Now, this might all look like giving up and lowering my standards. I don't believe so. It is simply a compromise in a country where the road traffic authorities harp on endlessly with "Don't fool yourself, speed kills" and completely ignore the fact that unlicensed and untrained drivers, unroadworthy vehicles, bald tyres, incorrect following distance, overtaking in the face of oncoming traffic and a million other things also kill people on the roads.

Fact is, it is quite literally a jungle out there.

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