Thursday, November 25, 2010

Fiily-fiili experience of officially-sanctioned Indiscipline on our roads!

Guess happened this morning! On my way to the office from Legon, I used the Okponglo - Adjiringanor route to Ashale-Botwe. At the Nmai Dzorn school junction, I notice a green bullion van driving recklessly behind me. When I got onto the Ashale Botwe road, I could see he was impatient to overtake me, so just before I got to the Old Town GOIL service station, I went a little more to the side of the road to allow him to pass. He overtook me and the four cars ahead of me all at once with his hazards on. Guess what! When I got to the Ashale-Botwe Aviation Road Juction a minute or two later, the bullion van had stopped. Guess why?... they were buying Kofi Brokeman! (Roasted ripe plantain) Can you believe that! I was so astonished and then cross that the driver had endangered so many lives by overtaking us so recklessly even with oncoming traffic only a minute or two before!


You know what I did? I indicated for them to roll down the window and addressed the driver and a young policeman in uniform seated in the front passenger seat: "I can't believe you were driving so recklessly and overtaking everybody and yet you have time to stop to buy Kofi Brokeman!" As they stared at me in surprise, I went on: "Your life is important, so don't endanger yourself if you don't need to. You didn’t need to drive so recklessly!" Then I walked to the vendor and got some Kofi Brokeman for myself. Apparently, I was served before they were, so one of the two female passengers at the back yelled at the vendor: "Aren't you going to give me my food?" The vendor apologised and handed the "wiase ye sum" (black polythene shopping bag) to her and then they drove off. Before then, however, I saw the driver and the policemen arguing. I hope it was about the silly thing they'd done.

Remember what I said earlier this week about officially-sanctioned indiscipline on our roads?!!!

3 comments:

  1. Interesting. So was the driver just in a hurry to buy food or what? I'm glad you said a few wise words to them....

    Keep posting.

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  2. I think he just didn't want to drive "slowly." The reason there were five vehicles driving in succession ahead of him was because the first was an old trotro and so wasn't moving too fast. In any case, driving at 40km/h in town and in an area as busy as Ashale-Botwe Old Town is not slow! Even on the highway, the speed limit for driving through a town is 50km/h!

    Thanks for the encouragement... I'll keep posting.

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  3. Interesting piece. While I'd like to think our law enforcement officers will crack down on reckless drivers like the one you just described, I don't think we are any where close to achieving that. God is the one who keeps us safe. Hopefully the Single Spine Salary project will give our officers some enough so they can concentrate on clamping down on these societal risks. Good job, Nana. I look forward to reading more of yor pieces.

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