1 Aug 2017

1st August 2017 Attempted murder or deliberate incompetence?

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Tuesday 1st August. 63-74F, 17-23C, rather a grey day forecast with rain starting around tea time.

When does terrifying, deadly incompetence, behind the wheel, become indifferent malevolence? Yesterday, our cheerful, easy-going, morning walker returned slightly shaken but not stirred into my usual verbiage. I thought I'd give it time to consider my response to my near death experience.

I am not your rigid, pedantic, 'pound of flesh' sort of chap. I demand no prescribed yard of asphalt as if by some god-given right to pedestrians. I carry no wind-tattered banners for walker's rights. In fact I regularly take to the verges to allow larger vehicles to pass when approaching each other or myself. A wave or grin is often my only reward for such voluntary kindness. It is but a trifling matter to give way to a far larger and much faster traveler on a mission. 

Yesterday I watched as a metallic diarrhea-coloured saloon approached without deviation from its intended path. I am well used to the merely incompetent driving within a meter, or so, as I stroll along with one foot regularly brushing the grass verge. One has to make allowances for drivers with known, neighbour-like levels of grudging idiocy. Some genetic 'brain damage before birth' can never, ever, be undone. One makes due allowances and allow them a suitably wide birth.

Sometimes a vehicle appears to be taking an approach course like a guided missile with one's number chalked up on the nosecone. One can but hope for a late swerve away from the soft bodied tissue and fragile bone, as one hovers uncertainly on the edge of the overgrown verge. When the cruise missile makes a last second adjustment in one's own direction then I can but call that deliberate. It is mind numbing, calculated dehumanization of a lesser being down to that of an injured hare or even a road-going slug. Though I rarely travel either so fast nor so slowly as either of these two.

The evil barsteward passed within two feet of me and drove onwards without a change in course or speed to suggest I had even been noticed. I turned to see a snow-white haired women in the rear seat but little else. I couldn't even recognise make or model of car. Being a fully paid up and certified member of the Old Fart's Society I was far too slow to catch the number plate. I would not have remembered it beyond fleetingly. As I corrupted the signal-to-noise ratio on the very first attempt at repetition. As usual, the driver was invisible and anonymous behind the sloping windscreen and fast moving reflections of trees, cloud and sky.

Despite my usual diatribes on the subject of poor driving, or the politicooze, I really am no danger to society. I merely express my general dismay at the daily signs of incompetence, or snake oil salesmanship, with my gentle, double/edged, barbed humour.

If you really think my "rants" are serious then I suggest you engage Google Translate. Because that is never my real intention. I merely amuse myself with word salad, with lashings of extra sauce, at their expense. It is my way of letting off steam at the unchangeable. Knowing, full well, that my words will never have the slightest effect in improving their daft or dangerous behaviour. It is all part of the harmless fun. BTW: The legal minimum distance for passing is 1.5m or 5' in Old Money. Even for sociopaths, even for drug addicts, even for the registered blind, even for prescription drug abusers and even for Alzheimer's drunks with a license to kill.

Perhaps it really is time to place the action camera on my shoulder like a pirate's gaudy parrot? I feel like endlessly repeating the message: That pedestrians, and cyclists, might look dangerous to you alone. But that I am merely human, with human rights, underneath the seemingly, terrifying exterior.

If I add a camera to the top of my baseball cap, or winter bobble hat, will it change driver's behaviour? It would seem not, judging by the endless cyclist's videos of driver mayhem and raving lunacy on YouTube. After all, the sociopath, the dug addict, the drunk, the cowardly work bully and the demented really don't give a flying fuck for anybody else. It's only a pedestrian, or cyclist, and they "PAY NO ROAD TAX!" So probably deserve to die anyway. No doubt "The Jews" and "The Blacks" paid no road tax either. Look at the numbers who turn up to enjoy every public execution, burning and flogging. Mine's with sauce. Or "ketchup" for the clinically pedantic and "splatter" movie fan.

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