Fri, 18 Mar 2005

Stupidity on wheels

I was going to let this go, but today’s final effort was too much. So here are a couple of anecdotes from Brisbane’s roads over the past two days.

Yesterday, leaving Indooroopilly shopping centre, I was amazed to see an aged hat-wearing loon in a Volvo driving anxiously along the footpath after apparently becoming confused in his attempts to use the normal exit from the carpark.

This morning, driving along Milton Road in heavy rain—on a day that had rain forecast and always looked like rain—I saw two complete idiots, one on a large motorcycle and one on a scooter. Their totally unsuitable clothing is what marked them as idiots. The guy on the bike was wearing a t-shirt, shorts and thongs. The girl on the scooter was wearing a skimpy fashionable top, designer trousers and high heels. They were both soaked, barely in control because of that, and in no state to survive a trip down the road.

Next was UQ, where the students seem to become worse drivers every year. This year’s crop seem to have a really aggressive attitude to roundabouts and no idea of the rules. And some girl in a small car was in such a hurry that she overtook me on the wrong side of double lines and forced an oncoming car to brake hard to avoid a head-on. And then, to drive the point home, I got stuck in a kilometre-long traffic jam on Sir Fred Schonell Drive, because a bunch of cars had driven up each others’ arses near the Gailey Road intersection.

Yeah, call me a grumpy old man, but I’m right about this—driving requires attentiveness, skill, courtesy and common sense. Too many people seem to think that none of this applies to them.

Posted at: 14:10

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