Butthead’s Beat: Flash your road rage

ELEVEN people lost their lives and scores were injured in just four days of road carnage on the South Coast recently.

Thousands of people are now calling out on social media for authorities to act, but… what to do?

Most are calling on RTI officers to monitor ‘hot spots’ more closely. This rather than them hiding behind bushes on innocuous straight stretches of road like olden-day ‘highwaymen’, ambushing unsuspecting speedsters and ordering them to ‘stand and deliver’.

As was reported last week, the stretches where there is a ‘chicken lane’, that third one that everyone thinks they own, might be a good start.

But this is so serious that we can’t just leave it up to the ‘thin brown line’ (RTI) to fight the battle all on its own. It is up to all law-abiding citizens to play a part and change selfish attitudes to road safety in general, ourselves included.

Other suggestions will be most welcome, but for starters:

The South Coast Herald and its sister newspapers, the South Coast Herald Bonus, Ugu Eyethu, Mid South Coast Mail and our joint website, www.southcoastherald.co.za. would like to launch a campaign called (for want of a better title):

FLASH A ‘ROAD HOOD’

After all, that’s what they are: ‘Hoods’ (not just ‘hogs’). They are breaking the law and put all our lives at risk. Some people are now too scared to even use the N2 after so many recent deaths.

The idea is to encourage every motorist to flash their lights at a motorist they see transgressing the laws of the road. To name a few transgressions which are known to have caused deaths:

• Crossing a solid white line (which saw a taxi driver jailed for three years when he killed Olympic mountain biker Burry Stander);

• People ignoring yield signs, stop streets and racing through traffic lights even after they’ve turned red;

• U-turns on the highway or even reversing back down off-ramps to avoid paying the R7 toll;

• Motorists blatantly ignoring that they do not have ‘right of way’;

• High speeds, of course;

Etc., etc., etc. (IF you have a valid driver’s licence, you should know the laws of the road.)

At first, the offending motorist might just give you the ‘middle finger’, but if everyone keeps flashing him/her, surely they will get the message eventually and (hopefully) not do it again.

It’s a culture of road safety and respect for each other that we want to encourage.

If we all become ‘flashers’, we might just make a difference.
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