Evil lurks, disguised as everyday people

When the idea of writing this particular piece entered into my mind I didn’t plan for it to be published on Halloween, but the irony that it will be is not lost on me. Mostly because, for some, this day is viewed as pure evil.

Anyway, a local radio DJ last week said that he was a bit taken aback by the brazen midday shooting of a Hawks member on the M1 highway in Johannesburg. Tongue-in-cheek, he went on to say that criminals no longer have the decency to do their evil deeds under the cover of darkness.

And as I was driving to Gerotek, the road-test facility I use just West of Pretoria, early the next morning, it “almost” hit me, for a choice of better words, just how bad the evil is becoming, that lurks on our roads within four-wheels when the sun is not up yet.

You have to start by avoiding the obviously drunk, who are still on their way home from what I can only guess was a party with people that see Halloween as a cool and rather innocent reason to dress up and drink, while kids gorge on sweets, and others, who are driving clearly completely unroadworthy cars in what must be some secret stealth mode, without a single light on.

Survive that and then you still have to stay on high alert when you approach an intersection or a traffic light, even if it is green for you, because coming the other way, you are almost guaranteed to encounter another car that simply drives straight through the intersection without any regard for life or the rules of the road.

I can go on for hours about what I see on our roads every day. It is wrong and it is dangerous. End of story.

But unfortunately it is only going to get worse as our traffic law enforcement officers seem to be rather allergic to the dark, while being equally allergic to tackling the very real problem of moving violations.

Do me a favour, just have a look around during your next drive to work or wherever you have to go and take note of the number of everyday suburban people, not just errant taxi drivers, who simply cruise through four-way stops, blast through traffic lights well after they have changed to red, don’t use their indicators, all while running their offices from their car. And then remember, this is done during the day. Now imagine how bad it is when they think nobody can see them.

In this week’s edition we unveil Isuzu’s renamed D-MAX bakkie, we take you behind the scenes in Toyota Gazoo Racing’s Dakar preparations on page 9 and bring you up to speed with our road test data on a Golf 7.5 GTD after undergoing a REVO software upgrade.