What is it in some drivers who feel holding the steering wheel gives them an associated ability to practice punches on the roadside?
My question was induced by the big-heartedness of some morally empty adults whose solution to a motor accident was nothing else but a fistfight.
I was on the road from Amina Roundabout in Lilongwe, driving towards Sheaffer Marque.
About 50 metres away from where this road branches into Area 15, a red X-trail darted from behind and overtook me with reckless, only to notice fast-approaching vehicles from the opposite lane.
At the same time, as the X-trail was still forcing its way back into its lane, in front of me, a white Toyota Hilux had joined from the Area 15 junction, into the main road, and was now in front of the X-trail.
The Toyota, laden with bags of farm produce, did not pick up speed forthwith. The cruising X-trail had no time to decelerate. There was not a way to seek relief on the opposite lane either.
I watched as the X-trail went screeched in a fruitless effort to stop before it rammed the Toyota.
Two bad decisions had been made, in my opinion; the driver of the white Toyota, before joining the main road, had misjudged the situation, mainly the distance and speed of vehicles on the main road.
The driver of the X-trail was so inconsiderate to overtake with alarming speed on a 50 kilometre-per-hour stretch whose bend affects visibility of oncoming vehicles.
But the traffic law would still find one ultimate culprit.
As you may guess, the rest was chaos, each of the two drivers trying to prove their case.
You should have seen how the two youthful drivers exchanged foul adjectives. They gesticulated like souls possessed. They cursed until each other’s cool seemed to have boiled out of manageable proportions.
Efforts by well-wishers to help them amicably resolve the matter fell on deaf ears. The crowd of onlookers grew, and so did the demons in the youthful drivers.
They were soon holding on to each other’s scruffs like two mangy dogs locked in a battle for an appetising bone.
One spat the other. The other reciprocated the gesture. It was enough to spark the third world war and what we then saw was an ugly exhibition of blows.
They fought their egos out. Blood ran down their noses.
When calm returned to earth and the two hot heads had let go of each other.
As I left the place, I asked myself what vehicle insurance is really for.
Sometimes the rage we exhibit on the road is from the bowels of our senselessness. Such inanity grows with time and overtakes our reasoning. n
