Petrol and time savers

I was driving through Durban's CBD yesterday and was stopped at every traffic light along a straight section of road. 
I wonder how much time and petrol will be saved by synchronizing those lights. Strictly speaking, if you get stopped at one light and all the others are synched, when you go you should get through them all. Not only will that be really pleasant, you wouldn't have to brake, then accelerate again in first gear and go through the gears again, your engine could run at constant, lower revs in a higher gear saving you fuel as you go.
This wouldn’t work for those that tear from light to light at high speed because by the time they arrived at the next light, the traffic that had built up there would not have moved off yet and they would be braking, then accelerating again, wasting more fuel than ever...

Who has Right of Way?

I do like a courteous driver. Someone who will let you into a gap in traffic, or get out of your way and let you all get on with your commute happily and safely.

We need to be careful with our generosity. Today I was at an intersection, a T-junction where I wanted to turn right an dtraffic was fairly heavy. A woman who was going to turn into the road waved me to go. As kind as her offer was, there were cars streaming around behind her basically meaning I could not go at all. She drove off with a frustrated look on her face because I didn't accept her gracious offer.

When doing this you need to be aware of a few things, look at the traffic from the other person's point of view. Can they actually go? Is there something that is blocking them and not you? Be mindful that you may have right of way on the road for a good reason, stopping to allow someone into the road will actually be causing an unexpected blockage in the road. We know that most people aren't concentrating on the road anyway, how would you feel if your corteous act caused a tragic accident a few meteres behind you?

My general rule is, if you have right of way, take it.

The Cost of Bad Driving

This morning there was an accident where a minibus taxi overturned when it swerved to avoid a car that had slowed down in front of it. Twelve people were injured.

That means the following;

• 12 people didn't make it to work today
• 12 people are now in a government hospital that won't help them much
• 5 people were seriously injured
• The hospital system, if it does save their lives, will probably leave them unable to work for a long time.
• Disability grants will be claimed.
• Further claims will be made from the Road Accident Fund
• There is one less taxi to take people to work (I'm not sure if this is a bad or good thing)
• A driver will lose his job, if he is not injured or killed and the Taxi owner will have to pay for repairs or a new taxi.

All this because one person wasn't paying attention on the road. Children die because of this kind of behaviour. The cost of an accident on the government, and ultimately our pockets is ridiculous. You and I pay for all those claims intax on our petrol. The worse we all drive, the more we end up paying...

This time it's Me

I'm afraid that I have been a pain in the traffic ass lately.
I always bitch about unroadworthy cars, or people unable to service theirs so they break down. Well, I picked mine up from a service, and broke down...

in the middle lane...

Then to make matters worse I even drove it without repairing the problem and broke down again. See my car is overheating. When it's cold I dont care, but then it splutters to a halt in the middle of the road and I really should.


Don't worry though, I'm fixing it myself right now