It’s the day before my 21st (+ VAT + Service charge...) birthday – where does the time go? I very nearly didn’t make it though. As I was leaving work I turned right to cross the dual carriageway outside the office (rather pleasantly called Persiaran Tropicana) and when I looked, there was nothing coming from the right so I pulled out – only to see this car appear out of nowhere to my right and he had to slam on his brakes and skidded along the road, narrowly missing smashing into my side. Luckily for me the carriageway heading the other way was clear, so I could slam my foot on the accelerator and speed to the other side of the road: had there been the usual jam, I’d have been, well, seriously fucked.
Anyway, I (obviously) made it and spent the rest of the journey shaking and home looking several times at road junctions before moving.
That reminded me of the campaign on the radio at the moment about car and road safety: apparently there are about 7000 deaths a year, which is staggering, but I am not actually that surprised. Roads are huge, with rubbishy planned junctions: each one is built as a minimum 2-4 lane motorway, encouraging speeding, aggressive driving and lane hopping; road signs are confusing, there doesn't seem to be many penalties for shit driving and I can't remember how many times I have seen drivers just ignore red lights. What’s strange is that the government spends money on other shit incentives rather than focussing on this problem – a friend of mine said that they’d recently funded the development of genetically modified mosquitoes to combat the dengue fever issue.
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