Today is not a random list – today is my feable attempt of saying: Take care of yourself and everyone else out there in traffic!
The music is across a few decades and styles – but there is a somber and important background: In Copenhagen, today (Friday, ed.), a young girl, only 10 years old, died because a car driver recklessly set aside traffic code, couldn’t stand having to wait in line behind a car that had stopped in front of a pedestrian crossing, decided to overtake on the inside – and plowed into a mother and her daughter walking across.
I don’t think anything the rest of us think, say or do can console the familty hit by the tragedy. Nevertheless, I am dedicating this week’s music to them.
What I do think we all can – and should – do is fight the tide of completely brain dead driving that more and more people seem to do just because. Because they think they are so damn important that mere rules cannot be allowed to hinder their way forward, because they think that they are superior drivers that of course can doo all the things that the rules prohibit and pull it off without any trouble, because… No, I just do not know what passes through their heads, if anything.
But recently, I personally have witnessed –
– Driving up and stopping at the rear of a line of -5-6 cars in front of a red light at a work zone with only one lane through. Hence the lights, alternating traffic from one side and the other. A car behind me – we’re talking number 7 or 8 in the queue – decides not to wait. Pulls across double solid lines, into the wrong traffic lane, accelerates madly into the one lane – where you would presume that the traffic from the other way might already be going. Sheer madness.
– While I am indicating and pulling into a right turn lane, a car that had been rather close behind me starts overtaking me on the left. I just have time to think “fine, then I’m rid of him” when he cuts in front of me and turns right, the same way I am going. If there’d been any bicyclists in the bicycle path on the inside of me, he’d killed them the same way that the driver mentioned before did – he would have had no chance of seeing them for my car.
– Just last night, a small van did more or less exactly the same manic manouver when my daughter, just having had her license for a week, was driving us home from the theater. Accelerate around us to the left, cutting across in front to turn right, the same way she was clearly going.
What the bloody f**k is so urgent that performing utterly stupid stunts like that and exposing not only yourself but all those around you to such risks is seen as ok? When all you get from it is saving 5 seconds – if that?
Nothing, if you ask me. Ab-so-lu-te-ly nothing.
…
The music list, then. Listen, enjoy – and if you would, take five silent seconds to wov that you will not be exceedingly stupid out there but drive carefully and in respect of all the others in the traffic.
Drive / The Cars
Aston Martin ’66 / Allan Olsen
I’m in love with my car / Queen
Baby, you can drive my car / Beatles
Photo courtesy of ASR Photos on Flickr.
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