I like speed. Not the drug - never had that, never intend to either. No, I like driving fast. In my time, I’ve had my fair share of tickets, but in recent years, I’ve been trying hard to slow down, to stick to the speed limit. I’ve even installed one of those recorder app thingys on my phone, linked to my car insurance, to encourage me to slow down. And thank God for that, because last night, on my way to the matric dance, if I’d been doing my preferred speed on the highway, I would have killed a pedestrian, and possibly myself as well.
It was dark (it’s winter), and I was in the fast lane on a piece of road with a gentle S-bend on an incline. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a pedestrian steps into the road from the concrete divider. Almost as if in slow-mo, I process this and think - “no way! This guy’s seen me, he’s going to step back.” He wasn’t stumbling and did not appear drunk. He just calmly walked across the road. In that moment of incredulity of realizing that he wasn’t stepping back, that he either truly did not see me, or was not aware of the danger of crossing a busy highway at night, I had to decide how to respond - which way around him to aim for. I braked like mad, swerved, and missed him, but then nearly hit the concrete barrier, so swerved again, and then nearly lost control of the car as I tried to avoid going into the next lane and hitting the car a few meters behind.
In the lane next to me, another car was sitting a few meters behind me, almost in my blind spot. I don’t think the driver saw the pedestrian either, until I swerved initially. As I was focused on trying not to lose control of the car, I didn’t see what happened next. But as I managed to glance at into the rear view mirror, I saw the pedestrian’s bag go flying out from behind the 2nd car, with all his stuff flying everywhere. My best guess is that it clipped him, or at least, clipped his bag. He survived though.
Thank God I hadn’t had my usual Friday afternoon end-of-the-school-week glass of wine, or, in this case, the end-of-term-celebratory glass of wine. Thank God I was going the speed limit. Because if either of those things had been different, the end result could have been very different.
Small decisions. Split seconds. Life and death.
1 comment:
I really wish pedestrians who are using the roads would also be aware of their own visibility when donning their outer layer of clothing.Coats and jackets tend to be predominantly black, navy or brown which is near impossible to see at six in the morning with windows that keep fogging up. Pedestrians also use the road rather than sidewalks which are mostly uneven or with plant obstacles. I have had numerous cases where, withing a solid darkness, a sudden movement alerted me to a person, being part of a tree shadow and moving towards me on a road that is poorly lit because of huge trees on the sidewalk.
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