Driving on the edge

Twice now in two weeks I have driven the N1 between Johannesburg and Cape Town.

I love the trip – my country spooling out ahead and behind, cosmos- and cow-dotted, punctuated by mealie fields, then sheep and anthills, and sheep that look like anthills; the dry river beds with names like Volstruisfontein and Renosterfontein, and the lovely mental pictures these conjure; the ridges of the Karoo with tiaras of stone; the huge, blue-swirled sky above; the trucks lit up like Christmas on that endless ribbon of road.

But, that road, that death trap, how I also dread it every time. However, on this occasion – for the first time in many years – I witnessed no accidents, no corpses on the tarmac, no smashed-up cars, no images left burned on my mind forever.

Still, outside Beaufort West there’s a sign declaring the number of days since the last accident: one. Underneath, the previous record is announced: one day. I guess I got lucky. Not like the dead boy in the car that time before, his neck snapped, his arms jammed above his head, broken upwards.

Or the two bodies blanketed beside a car so crumpled it was unidentifiable. Or the woman clutching her child after a head-on collision, rocking, eyes closed, and I will never know if she was comforting her daughter or keening for her. And every time I wondered if next time it would be me, or someone I loved.

However, what wasn’t different this time on the beautiful, deadly N1 was the number of drivers who think they’re bulletproof. They’re invariably motorists in fancy cars who no doubt complain about crime and corruption endlessly, yet never blink when overtaking six cars on a solid white line, or veering into oncoming traffic on a blind rise because they’re in a hurry.

They fly along way above the speed limit – 160km/h or 180km/h, not the accidental creep when the needle nudges to 130km on a downhill – because traffic laws are inconvenient; they’re for other people, not for them.

Yet the thing such reckless drivers seemingly discount is that those “other people” they’re endangering – the people in the way, impeding their progress – are someone else’s people, someone else’s loved ones. So, surely, it’s time we nudged that previous accident-free record above one day?

For more news your way, download The Citizen’s app for iOS and Android.