Welcome to the jungle where survival belongs to loudest engine

Trucks are causing intimidation to small cars on the roads.[File, Standard]

There was a time in Kenya when owning a car, any car, was considered progress. A sign that your parents’ prayers, Helb stipend, chama contributions and endless motivational quotes had finally produced fruit. Today, however, owning a small car feels less like progress and more like volunteering for public humiliation on wheels.

The roads have become a wildlife documentary where small cars are gazelles and trucks are hungry buffaloes with failed anger management classes. The moment a lorry driver sees your tiny Vitz, Demio, Passo, or Picanto, he immediately behaves like you are not a fellow motorist but a pothole with headlights. He overtakes from angles discovered only in military combat training. He flashes lights bright enough to resurrect your ancestors. Before you recover from the first blink, another truck behind him adds yellow lights, blue lights, white lights, green lights, and blinking LEDs that resemble a political rally entering heaven.

At night, the road looks less like transport infrastructure and more like a disco organised by demons.

You move left to save your life. You move further left to save your side mirror. Suddenly, your car is grazing in bushes like a goat escaping slaughter. Some of these drivers appear to have graduated from tractor driving on maize farms. They drive trailers as if they are still on village paths where there is only one road.

Collecting bribes

And where are the police? Ah, the police are present. Very present. In fact, Kenya may have the hardest-working traffic police in Africa if collecting bribes were an Olympic sport. Their true expertise is standing beside the road with an expression suggesting national security is under threat because your reflector sticker expired in 2019. Meanwhile, the trailer behind you has no lights, no indicators and possibly no driver’s soul.

Thomas Hobbes described life in the state of nature as “solitary, nasty, brutish, and short...” Clearly, the man had previewed the Nakuru-Eldoret highway during long weekends.

The suffering is now entering medical dimensions. Many motorists who once saw perfectly at night are suddenly queuing at eye clinics for spectacles. Village elders are confused. One elder recently asked, “How come you people now wear glasses while your grandfather used to identify goats three hills away at midnight?” How do you explain to him that Kenyan headlights can permanently rearrange your retina?

Women drivers suffer even more. The moment some road bullies notice a lady behind the wheel, they begin intimidating her as if the road belongs to men who shout the loudest. It is arrogance mixed with primitive masculinity and diesel fumes.

Kenya needs strict enforcement against reckless overtaking, illegal headlights and corrupt policing. Roads cannot continue operating under jungle law where survival belongs to the loudest engine. Do we really need driving schools?