Road Hog Blog Log

This is a post about driving. Don't get me wrong, I love driving; its fun and exhilarating to be in control of a car, travelling and listening to my favourite tunes. Its fun until you nearly slam into that car that just cut into your lane, or you get flashed (no, not the perverted kind) and blinded from behind, or the motorbike creeps up on your blind spot and scares the hell out of you....

Being an automobile driver for several years now, I'm convinced that the newspapers are wrong when they say that Singaporeans are more educated now, smarter now, because from what I can see on the roads, there are a still an enormously large number of numbnuts who obviously never taxed a single neuron when in their cars. Their brains are simply shut off as soon as they touch that steering wheel.

Let's do a case study based on a personal experience.

From the XX-Files, Case Study 41A: Flashing (no not the perverted kind) Beemer

Situation

At a 3-lane traffic junction driving away from Orchard Road, numbnut Beemer is behind an innocent Mercedes who has no idea that beemer is about to commit a dastardly stupid act. Situation is as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Incident initial position.

As can be seen, dumdum Beemer is already extremely impatient and is so close to the Merc as if in an attempt to read all of the Merc's car decals.

The moment the traffic light turns green, Merc is off the starting line and is way ahead of everyone else due to its superior German engineering. However, numbskull Beemer obviously has 5 pregnant ladies in his car and is so impatient with the Merc that he decides to cut to his left without signaling!. But before he does that, he surprises poor Merc with a blast of pure light energy from his headlights.

Figure 2: Incident illustrating lack of brain utilization.

Figure 2 describes the caveman-like act that the Beemer executes which confounds everyone with his (lack of) intelligence.

Analysis (using our brains)
Firstly,let us establish the Merc's innocence.

1) Merc has, among the 3 lanes, reacted the fastest. Any faster and he would have to speed off before the traffic light turned green.
2) Furthermore, there is a speed camera not 50 meters from the starting point which restricts Merc's speed to 60 kmph.

Next let us see what Beemer has done wrong here.
1) Beemer did not signal when turning left. This is a pet peeve of mine.

Singaporeans hate to signal, as it obviously takes up so much energy to push the little stick. From my experience, the turning signal is so seldom used that most drivers probably have no idea what that lever sticking out from the steering wheel is for.

2) Beemer flashed (no, still not the peverted kind) Merc.

Now this is the ground-zero of stupid behaviour. As far as I can see, flashing the Merc only serves 2 purposes, of which both are stupid and suicidal.

Flashing only aims to:
i) To blind the Merc driver and kill his eyes so that he can lose control of the car and slam into the side railings resulting in Beemer crashing into the Merc.
ii) To intimidate the Merc into switching to his left lane, which would result in a catastrophic accident as both cars switch to the left.

Conclusion
Numbnut Beemer switched off his brain whilst driving.


So as can be seen from the case study, many drivers really do not think when they are driving. The lesson here: Always signal and do not flash for no apparent reason.

And yes this applies to the perverts as well.