Mud and Misdemeanours

It rained yesterday evening, and most of the night. Unseasonably so, as the rains aren’t due until the end of March. However, I’d heard over the weekend a report of one person saying that it always rains on 14th February, and true enough, it was still raining this morning. A good thing as we do need it. The downside though is the traffic that results (even worse than normal), and the dust that has been prevalent turns to mud. Consequently, the mud road down to the office was just that – thick with mud. Knowing how it would be and not fancying having shoes and feet caked in sticky red mud at the start of the day, I drove the 800m or so to work. Even in my 4-wheel drive, I skewed around a little bit, but my tyres managed to maintain a reasonable grip. Saloon cars perhaps wouldn’t have fared so well, and anyone going uphill would have had a harder job.

 

Precisely because of that, when I had to drive home later in the morning, I chose to go the rather longer, though tarmacked (albeit with potholes in abundance), route. This drive could only have been about 5 minutes in length but there seemed to be an abundance of driving misdemeanours in that time:
• Somewhat sporadic driving on the part of one driver, due to their talking on their mobile phone.
• The car in front of me indicating right at one T-junction, but then turning left. Amazing to have any indicators on at all, but not exactly helpful in this case! Perhaps he thought a T-junction is like a filter lane?
• The next T-junction is at the top of the hill. There’s a very clear road sign in the approach for those going uphill, that there’s no right turn allowed there. At least 3 of the cars in front of me turned right!!
• As I was coming to the left-hand turn into my road, a car coming out of it clearly wanted to go right, as he was completely over on the right-hand side of the road, very effectively blocking my way!

 

And that’s without venturing beyond the immediate neighbourhood onto any of the main roads! People do get fined for driving offences here (those who don’t then pay bribes that is), but every day, there are an abundance of others who between them, break most of the rules in the book. To be fair, today's tally did seem to be particularly concentrated.