EDITOR – I am herewith writing about an incident which was both unexpected and traumatic for me.
It happened on Monday, May 19, on Van Der Linde Road in Bedfordview.
As I woke up as fresh as a daisy on Monday morning, ready to tackle the week and write a dreaded but prepared-for accounting semester test that day, not the least did I expect that I was going to be verbally assaulted by a stranger.
I was driving to varsity at approximately 6.30am when I approached a van that was driving relatively slowly.
I decided to overtake the van and did not even clock 40 kilometres an hour on the speedometer in the process.
Little did I know that I had caught the driver of the van at the wrong moment.
Two traffic lights later and the van was driving extremely close behind my car.
As I sat in my car in silence, thinking about all my tasks of the day on my to-do-list, I was startled with a firm and aggressive knock on my car window.
Frightened, I looked beside me to address the source of the loud knock and there was a man standing outside my car with an angry look on his face.
Being a young woman alone in a car who was clearly vulnerable, I did not know what to do. I froze and suspected I was either about to get a gun held at me, get my car stolen, get smash and grabbed or get hijacked.
After a quick look at my side mirror, I realised the man was the driver of the van because the driver’s door of the van was standing wide open in the middle of the traffic.
I looked at the man in utter fear to find out what had bothered him to the extent that he had to disrupt and violate traffic to get out of his vehicle and approach me.
I was too scared to open the window.
As he stood there cursing, pointing and shouting, I sat vulnerably in my car with a lump in my throat and my heart beating like a drum.
What scared me about this man was if he had the audacity to violate morning traffic and knock on my window to curse at me about something, I do not even know I did wrong, clearly he is capable of doing something a lot more intimidating.
What traumatised me is that I was just one woman alone in my car, stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic, and here was an angry man standing right beside me aggressively knocking on my window.
It sounds silly, but at that moment my legs went weak and I accepted my fate, that I was about to get hijacked and possibly killed.
As the saying goes, I saw my life flash before my eyes.
So I write in testament to warn fellow road users, particularly young women who drive alone, to be careful.
Keep a safe distance between you and other cars while driving, be aware, be extremely attentive, be safe and do not speed.
Refrain from anger on the road, even if the person who caused your anger was in the wrong.
As my father always says, “You have to learn how to drive for other people.”
FRIGHTENED DRIVER
BEDFORDVIEW
r Letter received May 22.
