Hazards on our roads
ON MY WAY home just before writing this column, I had to slam my foot down hard on my car’s brakes for the umpteenth time this month. Usually I brake hard a few times a week, but my salary ran out early this month and I was unable to drive around much, which spared me the whiplash boogie I’ve become so used to.
I was cruising behind a white Opel, when the driver of the car suddenly stopped – making it necessary for me to apply a generous dose of G-force to my middle-aged neck.
After he had stopped, the back door opened and a passenger alighted from the vehicle … and a second later the emergency hazard lights came on. How thoughtful of him.
It occurred to me that this skilled driver had studied his entire K53 handbook, not realising that in the learner’s test one had to choose a correct answer from a series of suggestions.
In fact, see if you can answer this one: When should you use your hazard lights? Select all answers that apply.
(A) You’ve had to stop quickly because you’ve come upon slow moving traffic and there’s a chance another vehicle might not see you and run into the back of you. (B) You’re changing a tyre on the side of the road. (C) Your vehicle has broken down and is being towed, or (D) You’ve parked on a yellow line to pick something up.
The correct answers are B and C; which means the way many drivers, especially many, many drivers of minibus taxis use their hazards is illegal. Also, you should not use hazard warning lights to warn other drivers if you parked illegally (you shouldn’t be parking illegally anyway).
But isn’t this the way South Africa is heading now anyway? We make up rules that make sense to us and reason that if other drivers were sensible, they will figure out that what we’re doing is totally acceptable
It’s a big concern how drivers disregard traffic rules. Ask yourself, when last have you slowed down when approaching a pedestrian crossing? And when last have you stopped to give pedestrians right of way at a pedestrian crossing? Don’t everyone do it all at once though, the shock may kill them.
The problem grows exponentially when bad drivers are coupled with inadequate street signage. I was driving down Synagogue Street recently and almost drove through a four-way intersection because the big red stop sign doesn’t light up when the car’s lights hits them.
Had I not been aware that there was an intersection somewhere in that general area, I could have missed it.
Even more of a concern for me is the notorious crossing at the Kalahari Lodge on the N12. One night I had to drive down Landbou and cross over the N12. But even with the GPS in front of me, the big luminous warning signs, the ripples in the tar, and the red flashing lights in the road itself, when I got to the actual intersection I almost missed it.
I was crawling along at the time and wondered what would have happened had I been speeding?
Yet, at the end of the day, it could costs thousands or tens of thousands of rands to replace road signs or to make dangerous intersections safer, but it takes a simple, conscious decision to – before we get into our cars – obey the rules of the road and the rules of courteous driving. And in this way, hopefully, there will be fewer tragic “mishaps” … and fewer “peace signs” shown to drivers of white Opels.