Tuesday, August 17, 2004

Driving. Why there should be individual lanes for P-plates

I am a P Plate. I am not proud of it, unfortunately, its my only guarantee that I dont end up as a sticky puddle of goo on singapore's gooey road. In fact, after my driving lessons in driving school, we newbies often wonder why no one except the octogenarians and above obey the speed limit. Now I know. They dont really see very well.
Any car with 1 piston and above seem to be zooming at breakneck speeds weaving in and out like deranged street racers, its not just attitude anymore... its culture. However, the legions of drivers all know that a P-plate is bad news. Thats because evryone has been a P-plate once and almost killed/smashed/crashed their car into everything irregardless of race/religion/sex. Its more of an "oopsie" kind of mistake then "i think I might hit it... lemme juz accelerate a bit more just to see...."
Thus, an invisible radius is raised around me where drivers are extra cautious. In fact, they are so cautious some of them decide that leaving the area of extreme danger is better than staying in the face of doom. Thats when mistakes happen. I have had loser diesel taxis gun their 2 bit engines trying to leave my radius and almost hit me int he process. I call this the P-Plate Slayers. Not that they actually kill anything... they tend to brake quickly and let the P-plate hit them. BANG! free paint job and new chassis for a little bit of inconvienience.
In fact, If enough conclusions can be drawn from our driving culture, we might even be able to market it as a tourist attraction. Our eternal hide and seek from the traffic police. The traffic police pretending not to see anything for fear of the 5 tonnes of paperwork involved due to ISO guidelines and of course, our not so well hidden and very well advertised speed cameras.

Driving sucks. But no one said culture is interesting. Most males (hetero) could do without it. But inadvertently, culture is created. Its not flashy, its not civilised but parameters are created and everyone respects the most quickest/safest driver. Except the taxi drivers of course...

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