Tuesday, October 12, 2010

What a Senseless Waste of Young Lives!

You should be able to enjoy driving your car without much worry on any given day here in Nairobi and indeed throughout the country, right? Wrong! We have hundreds of unqualified and drunk drivers on our roads at any given time ready to smash right into your vehicle. In fact, drunks can be seen driving even at noon without a care in the world. One only needs to drive at night from around 11pm along Lang'ata road and Waiyaki Way and see the unbelievable carnage caused by reckless young people in their souped up Subaru Imprezza's and Forresters!

These young men and women are mostly drunk and hit the road like Kamikaze pilots ready for a suicide mission. As it's always too common, they are always dead on time. And what for at such tender age of 25? Even if you are one careful driver who happens to obey all the known traffic rules, be careful since a mad man may plough right into you any time here in Nairobi!

Another menace comes from Matatu madness who flout even the simplest of known road courtesy. The brains of matatu drivers are usually fuming and filled with stress to the brim. The hot head that is matatu driver is constantly thinking about saving the next minute or two and making an extra shilling here and there before he ends the shift. As it's always too common, he ends up banging right into an innocent driver or mowing a innocent pedestrian. This ultimately ends up draining all that he has worked for so hard for the last one year or so.

And where are the notoriously lazy and inefficient traffic cops as all the madness is going on? Of course, they are busy out there milking our pockets dry in tiniest of bribes. One should basically be able to enjoy his ride without much worry. But in Kenya, a vehicles is best described as a gift that became a curse. You are on your own when it comes to driving on Kenyan roads.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

So sad. I sympathise with these young kids who are on a show off mission in fast cars either legally bought or borrowed only to end up in serious accidents.