The claim that we are a rainbow nation a culture of solidarity and diversity smacks me either as pure propaganda or wishful thinking. But there is at least one thing that unifies South Africans across the board: horribly irresponsible driving. Driving that is expressive of a culture of ruthless disregard for others.
The claim that we are a rainbow nation a culture of solidarity and diversity smacks me either as pure propaganda or wishful thinking. But there is at least one thing that unifies South Africans across the board: horribly irresponsible driving. Driving that is expressive of a culture of ruthless disregard for others.
I have lost three friends on South African roads in the last eight years. If each South African lost only one friend to bad driving the population would diminish markedly!
My friend Dave Hanton was one of those taken out by the culture of ruthless disregard. I am sad and angry that an entire life is lost to this chilling culture.
A thoughtless decision to overtake another vehicle where such overtaking should not occur eyes may just as well have been shut resulted in a personal history, constituted by innumerable rich experiences, being brought to an absurd end.
Almost every time I take to the roads I encounter bad driving, terrible driving, suicidal driving, criminal driving: driving that actually kills large numbers of people with record breaking numbers and mountains of bodies piling up. And we still do not learn.
Are we a nation of fools? Perhaps we are a rainbow nation after all criminal incompetence is perhaps the golden thread that makes us many and one.
These potential criminals never cease to amaze me. To see the impressive levels of negligence and incompetence is like watching a surrealist film: is this really happening?
Has that person really done what I think I just saw him do? I must be dreaming. Will I be the next victim to join Dave, or will it be one of my children?
Or will one of the innumerable potential killers on our roads take one of you out? Perhaps you are one of the potential killers, waiting for the day in which you will be able fully to express what one could not be blamed for thinking is your deepest wish, judging by your behavior on the road: to take a human life.
I ask myself, what is in the mind of all those people who drive like lunatics, who glue themselves to the back of my car when I am driving at speed, or who overtake on blind curves, or on roads where such manoeuvres are deeply unsafe?
The fact that so many drive with ruthless disregard demands that we explore the social origins of such behaviour, for it is so widespread that the offenders must be responding to a generalised need of sorts; a macabre need.
A group of cyclist friends came across a body a few years ago on the side of a road on the outskirts of Pretoria. Road kill.
The person who took him out did not even bother to stop. The body was already stiff and cold. The time of his death was recorded on his watch as the impact had made it stop.
Stories like these have become quotidian. Nothing special. For the roads to become safe there must be a culture of solidarity. But there is no culture of this sort to be found on our roads.
The culture on South African roads is largely a culture of ruthless disregard for one’s neighbor, a culture of hatred and disrespect.
A culture that screams “You do not matter, you worthless scum. Get out of my way or face the consequences.
You mean nothing to me, nothing at all. You are just an obstacle and I wish you did not exist.” This culture cannot solely be a reflection of what happens on the roads.
Rather,it must be an expression of a general malaise, the malaise that makes it so that talk of unity and solidarity can be nothing more than political propaganda or wishful thinking by the hopelessly blind.
What we do on our roads speaks of the culture of the day, where the scramble to the top is achieved violently, ruthlessly and selfishly.
Others are at best mere steps on the way up. This culture killed Dave Hanton. The driver who drove into him was merely the gun in our nation’s hand the barrel still warm, eagerly awaiting its next victim.
Pedro Tabensky is an Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy at Rhodes University.
