Friday 13 June 2008

The motorway dance

There's a funny dance going on on the motorway. Ever since the week of many accidents, the police have been patrolling and stopping people for speeding and other offences. Funnily enough, a certain friend of mine didn't know there was a speed limit, he thought we had an autobahn style motorway, and he was shocked to hear it was 100 km/h after following me at 140 km/h (I think he's lying, I never go beyond 120 km/h, well at least that's what I'm saying, don't want to incriminate myself too much).

So these days we all try to keep the speed limit. However, if one car breaks away and accelerates, it seems many of us have the same idea, thinking, well if he's going at that speed, either they'll catch him and be busy charging him whilst I cruise past and if they don't stop him, there's no way they can stop me. So then the fast lane parade speeds up. However if the first breakaway car for whatever reason slows down, maybe to sneeze or answer his phone, who knows, we all screech on our brakes, worried that he has seen a police car.

In fact, any distraction is now cause for concern that there may be a police car on the side of the road. Yesterday I zoomed past a car only to think, damn, was it a police car and did they see me? But as I looked in my rearview mirror I realised it was only a taxi and breathed a sigh of relief and continued. Last Saturday we were all happily going at 115 km/h until the leader of the pack, a trotro, braked to
80km/h as he passed the police and their accompanying speed camera. It was such a hilarious sight (albeit dangerous), seeing the trotro cause a line of eight cars to brake, and reduce his speed to 20km/h below the limit, as if to redeem himself for speeding.

As the dance of breaking and accelerating continues and provides for very entertaining moments, I can't help but wonder: wouldn't it be easier, for all of us, if we just stuck to the 100km/h speed limit?

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