Encounter with a road drama queen

By Tony Ngare

For a long time in the second hand motor industry circles, the woman driven car has been perceived as brand new.

Salespeople are notorious for being economical with the truth, especially when that truth would ruin a sales deal. However, when ‘woman driven’ label is dropped, this is probably one of the rare moments that a salesperson would be talking the truth about perceived quality of the vehicle.

The tale by the sales people about women being careful drivers is different on the roads.

On a number of instances my pals and I have been left cringing on our seats and wondering what became of women drivers.

Last weekend, while travelling to the Slopes we encountered a female motorist. Our first ‘meeting’ was at a fuel station.

Before we got to the station, she had been there for some minutes since the car before hers was taking longer to leave.

On the other side of the pump, there was faster progress. However, just as she was about to reverse her car to move to the pump, we arrived and occupied the slot before she could.

Saved from vittrol

She snapped. She expected us to use our ‘common sense’ and give her way because she had arrived earlier than us.

Well, we didn’t see it her way.

She threw tantrums and came close to being vulgar. Thankfully, the children in her car retrained her and our ears were saved the vitriol that was about to be

Unleashed.

The station attendants knew better than to join in the drama. They served us and off we sped grateful the episode was behind us.

We were wrong. Moments later the woman was breathing down our necks. For close to three kilometres she drove behind us barely two metres shy of our rear bumper. When we eventually got to a straight stretch we gladly let her fly past us. While as we thought she would just pass and go away. What she did astounded us. As soon as she was ahead of us she slammed on the brakes and were it not for Bena’s alertness behind the wheel, we could have done a tidy job of ramming into her boot. Realising she had not succeeded or probably she had made her point, she cruised away flying over two bumps in the process.

Bena is hot tempered and he did not take the woman’s stunts lightly.

"Boys it is show time," he said and revelled off before we could protest or talk some sense into him.

Head on collision

All we could do is hold on to our seats tight and watch the two mad motorists’ road show.

Bena closed on the subject of his fury and attempted to overtake. All the while, there was a matatu approaching fast from the opposite direction.

The woman swung her car to the right and it was by grace of God she barely managed to partially move back to her side just in time as a matatu in full flight opted to go off the road to avoid a head on collision.

Not too keen to court misfortune when we had a long trip ahead, Bena let her go.

From my assessment, the woman looked a pro at ‘road shows’. I pity whoever will buy her car if she ever gets to sell it.