Thursday 29 November 2007

Road Rules 101

A little while ago, I stepped out of commons with the missus after gorging down one of those delightfully sinful chocolate things. You know, the one that's slightly hard, but is made of a brownie casing, with chocolate mousse in the middle and icing sugar sprinkled on top. Wow!

So anyway, as soon as we stepped out, a plain-clothed policeman stopped us and told us to move back towards the door. He said the road was closed. The road was indeed deserted in a way that only Mahinda Rajapaksha can have done on a busy Thursday afternoon. So then the motorcade swept past, at which point my days of reading the Highway Code flashed before me. I've never seen the convoys go by so fast! Here are a couple of the road rules that I noted were broken in the minute of officials flying by at high speeds.

1. Excessive speeding - the convoy was easily doing well over 130km/h on flower road. How dangerous is that?
2. Driving on the wrong side of the road.
3. Driving without a number plate - almost all the vehicles had no plate!
4. Overtaking on the wrong side - a backup jeep over took one of the black beemers from the left!
5. (W)reckless driving - goes without saying. Put's a whole load of pedestrians and road-side buildings in jeapordy.
6. Exhaust emissions being over the allowed limit - the emissions were black. Just the other day I saw a cop stopping a vehicle for the same offence at Maradana junc. Wonder where he is today!

These are the days I wish we had the services of Kiran Bedi, the first female offer of the Indian Police Force, who is famous for being a tough cop - a reputation she earned by even booking the prime minister of India's vehicle for illegal parking.

4 musings:

Darwin said...

You do mean reckless driving right? Or was that an intended pun by saying wreckless driving? If so it's a very good one!

pissu perera said...

same thing happened to me when i was with a bunch of friends. one guy didn't realize what was happening and refused to move from the pavement at which point the army guy just yanked him off the street. he later explained that he was doing his job, which he was. stupid fucktard in the motorcade, must think he does us all a favour by stepping out at rush hour. btw, i dont think it was mahinda. he travels by helicopter mostly. it was prob little brother gota or a big shot of one of the forces.

Confab said...

ack! unfortunately the pun wasn't intended, but u could take it that way:D. I always made this mistake, even when I did recklessness as a subject. sigh. Thanks for pointing it out D!

PP - yeah ur right i don't think it was MR either. But it's cooler to blame it all on him:)

Jack Point said...

There are two classes of people here:

1. The rulers
2. and the Ruled.

The rulers know no law, they are above the law. Whatever law exists only for the ruled.

Any member of the ruled who has some connection with the ruling class, if he knows the chauffeur or houseboy of a member of the ruling class, then he gets elevated to the ruling class and is also above the law.