Witnessed an unremarkable yet interesting incident on the city roads today.
Was driving behind a young woman on a little scooter. Right next to her in the adjacent lane was a middle aged bloke in his trade van. We continue like this for a hundred meters or so before the guy decides to change over to the scooter's (and my) lane. So he indicates. He indicates for a fair amount of time after which he twists his neck around to look back. All the while he is still indicating. Then he straightens his head and lets the indicator run for another sec or so.
Then the lane changing begins. It all seemed like happening in slow motion. The van is slowly moving over. The scooter is still right adjacent to it and still completely oblivious of the van's movements. Eventually the van is too close to the scooter to go unnoticed anymore. The woman swerves to the left, straightens out and accelerates out of the van's path and toots her little horn. Van driver seems confused, woman must have been pissed and I was half laughing/half guilty.
Whose fault? Everyone's it seems.
Van driver had the one big fault since he is the one who nearly run down the scooter. But I had a really good, wide angle view of all this. And he really couldn't have done anything else. His carefulness was the only thing that saved the day.
The woman seems to be mostly at fault because she was just too oblivious of her surroundings to be a good driver/rider. Too absent minded, too short sighted, too inexperienced? God only knows. But sitting on a little scooter, hidden away at a driver's blind spot is just bad driving in my book.
And my fault? I sat there as a mere spectator. I could have/should have tooted. I didn't for the simple reason that I was too far back and I was worried it might cause both or either one of them to make sudden, jerky movements. Thankfully, nothing serious happened at all. Else I would have really regretted not tooting.
What's the point of the story? Not sure. The usual I guess. Be careful, be aware, be safe. Like I once heard in a song... the biggest problems are the ones that blindside you on an idle afternoon.
Bookmarks