Mirror Magazine

Mirror Magazine

Drive on…
By Tharangani Perera
Remember that time, when you were peacefully driving along Galle Road, minding your own business and probably listening to soft music by Enya, when your car was crashed into, for adhering to the traffic laws currently in effect? Or you were doing your best to maneuver your car into the correct traffic lane amidst millions of cars with only a smidgen of wavering courage egging you on, when you got copped for ‘Obstruction of Traffic?’ Or remember when you were at a junction where five different vehicles crossed meanderingly in front of you, making you miss the green light?

Welcome to the world of Sri Lankan driving, where Darwin’s law of Survival of the Fittest is demonstrated graphically in high resolution, where insults fly at the speed of light and the steering wheel is mightier than the sword!

Do you as a pedestrian follow that old rule, where before crossing the road at the yellow lines, you look to your left, then look to your right, then to your left again, and step off the curb to cross the road if no vehicles are heading towards you? Are you crazy? Do you know how many people have been killed or seriously injured after they followed that rule to a tee, because of drivers who are drunk or thrive on speed thrills?

Do you as a driver, look both ways at an intersection to confirm the absence of approaching vehicles before proceeding to drive? Are you that naïve as to think that the possibility of a car rounding up from a corner, which is no less than 50 yards away, to collide into your car at a very high speed, is less than zero percent?

Whether you’re a local or a tourist, pedestrian or driver, if you have any hopes of making it home after surviving on the roads in this country, you must know the norm on the Sri Lankan highway: Reckless and Speedy Driving. If the manufacturers of Toyotas and Nissans knew what their boring cars are capable of on the narrow roads of Sri Lanka, they would beat the McLaren F1 off the top of the car market with a giant gear stick.

If you think for a single moment that you can complete your walking or driving tasks like any other normal pedestrian or driver, you’re wrong. On these roads, you have to play your role as the paranoid driver and paranoid pedestrian. The paranoid driver can never look cool as ordinary drivers like Paul Walker from the Fast And The Furious. He must always keep both eyes on the road and a foot on the brakes. The paranoid pedestrian should always be on the lookout for crazy drivers who are out for the fastest and the shortest route from point A to point B, irrespective of whether or not it’s over any pedestrians crossing the road. Best thing to do is purchase a swiveling camera and hook it up on your head and connect it to a palmtop, which you can monitor whenever you’re walking.

Next is the driver who made you really late for work by driving really slow and being completely oblivious to the rest of the universe. Most of us come across such dawdling drivers, who act like their cars are sedated. Another problem related to such drivers is that they do everything in their power to prevent others from overtaking them. While driving fast can be dangerous, driving too much below the speed limit can cause inconvenience and frustrate fellow drivers.

Falling into this category are drivers who pause in the middle of the road and indecisively look around, wondering where to turn or park. Also, some drivers just idly contemplate their life in the middle of the road, randomly wondering where to go next in their drunken state of mind.

These drivers will never smash you into little bits, because they can’t, even if they tried. On the downside, they will make you late for whatever occasion that you are to attend, and you will have to go through waking up early morning and bathing yourself frozen to avoid these drivers.

Many more problems await us on the road. Most drivers don’t know the Highway Code or simply choose to disregard it. Almost every Sri Lankan driver learns to totally ignore road signs and road markings after about a month of driving. It’s doubtful if most drivers even know what road signs represent.
The signal light is almost redundant as a warning to other drivers when they make a turning or switch lanes. Why waste all your energy to operate that little lever located on the side of the steering wheel, which can be activated by the mere flick of your pinkie?

Many drivers live to overtake other vehicles from the left. This is mostly done by bikes and three-wheelers, which always seem to be in a hurry to get to places at whatever price. Many are those who are seen happily driving in the dead centre of the road until an oncoming vehicle approaches, at which point, they swerve hard to their left and go careening past the other vehicles, which in turn have to put up quite a struggle to avoid a collision of massive proportions.

The dearth of spatial comprehension of the drivers in this country, combined with their attitude, recklessness, uncontrollable road rage and thirst for speed thrills lead to many of the traffic problems we face at present, which are surely enough to give even aspirin a headache!

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