Motorised mayhem
Having been nearly wiped off the face of the planet twice on consecutive days at the R24 / N12 split in Bedfordview I thought it might be fruitful to share my observations on South African driving , and the rules of the road . For a start , “ rules of the road ” is a bit strong in the South African context , for a “ rule ” implies something cast in stone , something black-and-white , immutable . And that ' s not what a rule of the road is in South Africa . No : here , rules of the road are more like “ guidelines ”; something one follows if one wishes , or not if one wants to live dangerously . So , here ' s some advice when entering the R24 to the airport off the N12 : NEVER travel in the right ( fast ) hand lane . Rather , slow down and hug the left hand curb like a Cape Town drunk will hang on to a street sign in a Southeaster . That ' s because it ' s not unusual , I have discovered , for some directionless dickhead on one ' s left to decide , as he enters the R24 , that he actually wants to be on the N12 , and he simply scoots to the right across the intervening two lanes of traffic to achieve his new objective . And , while I ' m on the subject of left and right lanes , slow and fast , on highways I find it deeply endearing that we have put behind us all the accumulated wisdom of first-world highway codes of “ keep left , pass right ”, an otherwise admirable and well-researched method of curbing road deaths , and we simply sail down the road in whatever lane we choose , at whatever speed we are comfortable with . Thus , on any highway in the country , but particularly the multi-lane ones around Gauteng , the left hand ( slow ) lane is often devoid of traffic except for a couple of BMWs and Porches travelling way beyond the speed limit ( and they ' re not ( always ) blue-light drivers , either ), while in the lanes further to the right sit trucks and bakkies , tannies and oomies , goggos and madodas tootling along at a steady 80km an hour . Let me tell you that if you drove like that in the UK ( for example ) you would be pulled over by a highway patrol , have points deducted from your licence and face a heavy fine faster than you could say “ Stirling Moss ”. You would need to be in a permanent coma not to know by now that the two biggest kill-factors on our roads are drink , and speed . Alcohol is involved in about half of all road deaths in South Africa . That ' s a staggering ( pun fully intended ) number . But speeding is involved in a significant number , too , and on any trip on a Gauteng freeway ( and not only on a freeway ) you
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will be passed by idiots doing well over the legal speed limit … to the left or to the right , and often weaving from left to right as they spot miniscule gaps between the streams of cars . It ' s the sort of driving you ' d expect from Jeremy Clarkson et al as they horse around in front of the cameras like overgrown schoolboys . And apart from the occasional high-profile arrest not much seems to be done about speeding ~ even though in Gauteng we have the perfect facility to end speeding once and for all on our highways . Instead of continuing with its farcical e-toll project which is frankly leading to its becoming discredited in the eyes of the travelling public , Sanral could do us all a favour ( and earn a pretty penny in the process ) if it coupled its number-plate recognition cameras in its e- toll gantries to synchronised clocks , which would print out a ticket if they picked up that a particular vehicle had driven from Gantry A to Gantry B in less time that it should take at the legal speed limit . But not all of us maplotters drive on highways . Many of us never venture much further than the local shop as we putter about our often potholed backstreets in our dust-caked cars and bakkies . And here lurks another danger : The four-way-stop or , as I like to call it , the dice-with-death . It ' s true that stop signs are sometimes stolen , knocked over or otherwise destroyed , but the number of people who ignore four-way stops and simply sail on through in the plot areas defies belief . On one road in our suburb , a quiet , narrow , potholed stretch of tar about a kilometre long , I can think of TWO fatal accidents within the past two years as a result of people omitting to stop at one or other of the four four-way stops , on that road alone . Think of the odds here : that ' s TWO cars , coming towards the same intersection at exactly the same time from different directions , and BOTH deciding to ignore a stop sign . Kaboom ! Talk about motorised Russian roulette !
WRITTEN BY SMALLHOLDERS , FOR SMALLHOLDERS