Traffic is bad enough anywhere in the world these days. There are just more motor vehicles than most infrastructure can withstand. It doesn’t help making it worse by being an idiot.
I have until now only heard about Johannesburg traffic jams in rush hour. Fortunately owing to the kind of activities I have been involved in recently since my return, I have not needed to hit the road at these bad times. Today however I was driving on the highway when suddenly it all came to a grinding halt. I set the car in neutral and surrendered to rush hour. Then I noticed the time. It was only 3:00. Could this be rush hour already? As bad as this at this time?
After wasting almost 45 minutes damn near stationary it became apparent as to what the holdup was. There were multiple accidents up ahead and this brought everything to a stop. Crawling along the highway is semi-understandable when there are emergency situations.
What pissed me off intensely was when I eventually got close to the both accidents, I realised that neither were actually blocking the flow of traffic at all. Both had been quickly removed and were at least 3 meters off to the side of the hard shoulder. We had 3 full lanes open for traffic. What was in fact slowing everything down was inconsiderate rubber necking gory seekers having to slow down to 15kph and creep past the accident so they can glare at all the going on’s. What can these idiots possibly hope to achieve by this? Offer assistance? Or simply have some juice gossip to be able to tell their mates when they get to pub later?
Think about this the next time you slow down to have an unnecessary look.
- You are creating a menace on the road and inconveniencing EVERYONE!
- You are endangering yourself and others as while you are looking at the accident you are not concentrating and are likely to be very close to be creating what is a regular secondary accident.
- Those are private people that are going through an extremely traumatic and possible embarrassing time and don’t need you gawking on.
Put yourself in their position and have some consideration for them and for everyone else on the road. It may not be long before you are in that situation.
