“A car is like a gun. You can kill someone else and you can kill yourself.”
Those words have stuck with me and were told to me by my dad when he handed me the keys to my first car.
You only need to drive on Edenvale’s roads once, or anywhere in Johannesburg for that matter, to know that many motorists do not know how easily a motor powered tin can will kill them.
The other morning when I left home at 6.15am, a car zoomed passed me into the oncoming traffic on Minuach Road.
He had very little regard for the three cars in the oncoming lane which had to swerve out the way to avoid a collision.
If I was travelling at 60km/h and he came speeding past me like a bullet, I reckon he may have been travelling at 120km/h.
As he sped off along Minuach Road, I watch as he skipped over two stop streets without even attempting to break.
What could he have been so late for that he needed to drive into oncoming traffic on a road used by parents who drop their children off at nearby schools, both primary and nursery?
I shook my head in annoyance as I watched the three other terrified motorists drive past while I recited his licence plate.
Driving in the CBD, there was the familiar number plate I had been reciting for the last two kilometres of my journey.
He was stopped opposite the KFC.
Amazed, I watched as the young male driver of the car strolled from the store with his coffee and breakfast packet.
The light changed and I drove off.
Not two minutes later, here comes the same driver, screaming past my car – again!
This time he was doing his speed McQueen bit in the CBD.
He narrowly avoided knocking down three pedestrians crossing at Hendrick Potgieter Road, then swerved to avoid a parked taxi, nearly colliding with a car in the other lane.
As the traffic light turned red he geared down and skipped that one too and just like that he flew up the hill towards Greenstone.
“Wow,” I thought as I waited for the traffic light to change.
Maybe if this young man’s father had told him what my dad did, he would be a little more cautious on the roads.
