It is probably about 5 percent of road users who are causing all of the problems we face. Even it it’s 1 percent and my radar counts 1000 cars on a ride, that’s 10 of these murderous @sshats.
Here’s some thoughts about the people I saw on Sunday’s loop – before the death in Camp’s bay, past the ever increasing spots where I know someone has been killed – seapoint where the youngster was doored, chappies, suikerbossie, black hill, Kommetjie road …
Maybe you recognise them.
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Three Porsche cabriolets in colours vivid like a hooker’s toenail with preppy Americans in pastel slacks and Birckensoles rev their engines aggressively and accelerate towards the corner close to where the ghost bike is on Chappies. I ride past them as they wait in the queue at the toll booth. I tell them they are w@nkers.
They roar past me again and I catch them at the viewpoint and decide to have a conversation in which I learn their nationality and tell them they are guests in this country and they can be grateful we don’t treat them like their leadership is treating visitors to theirs.
A superbike on Victoria doing about 140 streaks past in an ear-splitting scream - like an infant who’s mother never heard him. Harley’s revving their visceral growl into a wall of sound, grown men with their inner Chiwawa’s wishing they were Rotweilers.
A tendrepreneur’s son, barely old enough to shave, behind the wheel of a Ferrari in Camps’ bay, revs his engine in a traffic jam going nowhere fast, while the chick in a sequined dress kneels on the passenger seat to take a selfie. God knows how many cocktails they have in them.
An informal taxi in Hout Bay, a clapped out i10, panel beaten at the front and back but not resprayed, blue smoke from a rusty exhaust …. a brand new Suzuki swift, a girl younger than my daughter on her phone one handed, weaving into the yellow line, a beer belied balding mofo in a Discovery for whom the task of finding his belly button would be a voyage of discovery, close passes me on the corner just beyond the bootleggers, the upwardly mobile outdoorsman in his Ford ranger, occupying all the road with a “me first attitude”, compensation for his microcephalic looks and microphallic undercarriage … on and on and on, the roads a display of entitlement and self aggrandizement, a parade of rights to the commons with no compensating responsibility to keep the greed, selfishness and narcissism in check. Ego unfettered by empathy.
And I haven’t even started on the 28,7 liters of pure ethanol every member of the drinking population in south Africa consumes per annum.
And one mamil – taking a break from his mother-in-law’s visit, curmudgeonly because he’s scared and resentful of the carelessness that is such a dominant feature on our roads, telling any motorist he pulls up next to that being on the phone while driving impairs motor activity to the same level as being 2x over the limit for alcohol, gassing himself up chappies when he’s supposed to be in zone 2 because there’s another mamil 200 meters ahead ….
