GREY MUTTER: Get yourself some GOOD music for your car, because when a driver, having a leisurely conversation on their cellphone, is holding up traffic you’re going to need something to calm you, writes Lance Fredericks.
AS LONG as I can justify it, then to me it’s perfectly acceptable, and nobody had better tell me any different, or else.
That seems to be the prevailing attitude being embraced in South Africa these days. And you will come across this attitude several times a day, if you are still sensitive to it. However, it seems as if we have been lulled into acceptance.
Let’s take my old bugbear for example … driving and using a cellular device. These days it’s strange to see someone driving without using their phone.
Driving whilst holding the phone up to an ear was bad, so these days it seems as if drivers are more sophisticated. Now they have their phone’s speaker on and drive holding the phone like a slice of warm, buttered toast.
However, it’s become pretty common to see motorists driving and texting; in fact it seems to almost have become the norm for people to be chatting on WhatsApp and driving.
After all, driving must be so boring. I mean hurtling down a narrow strip of tar at around 55km/h in a 1.5 ton hunk of metal, glass, plastic and flammable liquid is so dull. Surely some people need some stimulation.
But, like so many things in this country we’d better get used to it. So the advice seems to be, be careful when braking because you never know if the driver behind you is watching a TikTok video or refreshing their Instagram feed.
Also, get yourself some GOOD music for your car. Your favourite tunes, because I have found that the music consoles and calms me when a driver, having a leisurely conversation and going at 23km/h, is holding up traffic.
As far as I could find out, the National Road Traffic Act no. 32 of 1996 that deals with the prohibition of use of a communication device while driving is still in effect. Maybe a lawyer could correct me. I know that the law was amended in 2015, but I doubt that it was repealed.
The wording of Section 1(a) of Regulation 308A is pretty straightforward.
“No person shall drive a vehicle on a public road, while holding a cellular or mobile telephone or any other communication device in one or both hands or with any part of their body.”
And if you think you’ve spotted a loophole, then Section 1(b) further states that you can only use your phone if it “is affixed to the vehicle or is part of the fixture in the vehicle and remains so affixed while being used or operated, or is especially adapted or designed to be affixed to the person of the driver as headgear, and is so used to enable such driver to use or operate such telephone or communication device without holding it …”
Did you notice the “without holding it” part? That completely eliminates texting as a form of communication while driving.
But, don’t hold your breath. I have my doubts that this will change any time soon. It is a concern because there seems to be a principle, an unwritten law that would say something like: “If you don’t actively discourage it, you are encouraging it”.
Here’s another, unrelated example, just to prove that I am versatile in my miserable griping.
Several of our city’s suburbs have been under siege of late with cable thieves striking on a regular basis, plunging areas into darkness.
The municipality has to be commended for the speed with which they get the power restored; and I say that without a hint of sarcasm.
However, I do believe that if nothing is done to actively prevent the theft of the cables, then all the hapless municipality is doing – as bad as it sounds – is donating copper cable to the bandits.
And as far as my limited understanding of accounting and economics goes, if one party keeps on benefiting and another party keeps losing resources then the former will, over time, become more powerful and wealthy than the latter.
Or put another way, are ratepayers and municipalities just making donations to the cable theft syndicates? Is there no plan to end this scourge? Do we just get used to it? Learn to live with it?
I ask because by now, people are seriously frustrated, and cable-theft frustrations have already boiled over. In early March this year,four technicians, who were fixing an electricity outage in Cruywagen Park and Graceland in Germiston, were apparently mistaken for cable thieves and attacked by an angry mob.
According to reports, the more the technicians pleaded for their attackers to remain calm, showing their credentials and work orders, the more enraged the mob became. They were beaten to death and four families lost breadwinners that day.
Also, as a result of the fatal attack, contractors are now refusing to enter the area, insisting on a police escort if they are ordered to restore power in those areas.
But, as I said earlier, try to dissuade a driver from using their cellphone or get in the way of a cable thief and you could end up on the wrong end of a ‘tantrum’ – to put it mildly.
Nearly 300 years ago, Benjamin Franklin said, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”; Oh how I wish we could embrace that simple lesson.
