Idiots

Favourite Man and I had a rare kid-free few hours as my son went to visit relatives in Cape Town overnight this weekend. We picked him up late Sunday afternoon in gathering fog, then headed home on the N2 highway.

The N2 is a rather notorious road. It's bordered by informal settlements and open veld. There have been incidents of hijacking, stone-throwing and other crimes that have led the police to establish a permanent base right next to the road and patrol it constantly. I avoid that road as much as possible - especially at night.

But with sunset at 5:50 or so these days, it's a bit hard not to travel at night if you're heading to Cape Town late afternoon, with a couple of stops on the way...!

Thus it was that we hit the road back after dark. Part of the packed Sunday evening traffic.

And within a few kms found that a car had rolled on the incoming side, backing up movement for a long way. There were police cars, tow trucks, fire engines etc all over the place, and every second car in our lane pulled over to the side of the road to gawk. Complete and utter traffic mess.

Favourite Man was just telling one of our passengers about another accident we'd seen when the cars in front of us started to scatter. Would you know it, some idiot was driving down the WRONG side of the two-lane highway, headed right toward us in the dark! We managed to avoid that one, but as soon as possible got off the N2 and into a side road.

Between the dark, the fog, the insanity on the road - we were very, VERY glad to get home last night.

You can drive as carefully as you want to - but you simply can't control what other drivers do. No wonder I'm becoming a homebody.