Our bad road conduct defines us

Twice this week, I had the misfortune of driving behind a lorry ferrying building blocks and another full of rubble from an excavation site. Some hung so precariously that if a piece happened to fall on a smaller vehicle on the side, death or injury would have been inevitable. Ominously, a vehicle on the side had excited school children enjoying carefree time nearby.

In my mind, I wondered whether the driver and the loader knew they were potential agents of death. Even the traffic police officers didn’t seem to either notice or care about how dangerously the stones had been piled. On a number of occasions I have had to slam on the brakes to avoid loose sand pebbles from an open-trunk lorry driving ahead of me rather than risk getting blinded or having my windscreen covered.