Road Reflexes

Today, my wife and I almost had several traffic accidents.

First incident. My wife was almost knocked down by a speeding cyclist from behind when she stepped out of the car. The inconsiderate cyclist simply ignored my wife and zoomed past her. Had my wife not darted away just in time, her heavily burdened body would crash onto the ground.

Second incident. I was at a cross junction waiting to make a right turn. I had lighted my right signal light. As the oncoming traffic dwindled to almost zero, I engaged first gear, ready to move off. An oncoming truck signaling left approached the junction. Thinking that the truck would turn left, I inched slowly forward to turn right. But the truck wasn’t turning left even though it had its left signal light switched on. I was stunned. To avoid an accident, I revved my car and charge across the junction. The truck high beamed me. After high beaming me, the truck’s left signal light turned off. I guessed he realized that he had forgotten to switch off his signal light. (I was just telling my sister about being careful of drivers forgetting to switch off their signal lights earlier on.)

Third incident. As I was driving my wife home on the third lane, using the rear view mirror, I saw a fast approaching taxi. I moved to the second lane, giving way to it. Somehow, it moved left to the second lane too. It then moved to the first lane trying to overtake me. Failing to see that there was a parked vehicle on the first lane, the taxi jammed break. However, the distance wasn’t far enough to avoid an accident with the parked vehicle, thus the taxi swerved towards the second lane. Observing his reckless driving, I quickly moved to the third lane to allow it space to move into the second lane.

Fourth incident. Along the same way back, sigh. Enough said.

I guess today is a day to test my wife and my reflexes. Fortunately, we are not senile yet.