Rants

This, my first real entry in my blog about bad drivers, is dedicated to this morning's wunderkind.

Some background:
I tend to be slightly more pedantic about the road rules than 99% of the other drivers. I know I'm not perfect and I know the roads, the traffic signs and the road markings are not perfect, so I try my best to drive in a way which is safe, and considerate of other drivers in the context of those conditions.
In that context, I try to obey the golden rule of the road, i.e. "Keep left, Pass right". This is made virtually impossible by drivers that insist on staying in the right-hand lane and/or the middle lane without passing. How am I supposed to pass right, if the middle and right-hand lanes are clogged by people that aren't passing nor keeping left? The answer is that I choose a lesser evil and I pass them in the left lane (the "slow" lane in South Africa)

This morning I had such an encounter. At about 10:00AM the N1 North was not very busy and I was keeping left. There were two cars in the middle and right-hand lanes respectively. They were not catching up with the car ahead in the left lane. Wunderkind was the middle-lane occupant. I was catching up with them in the left lane and had plenty of opportunity to safely pass Wunderkind before I reached the car which was ahead of me in the distance. That is, until Wunderkind started speeding up when I was passing him.... I realised this only as I was about to move into the middle lane after indicating. I was committed by then and pushed in front of Wunderkind.

Wunderkind then commenced to flash his lights at me and started chasing me. I ignored him and moved back into the left lane. Eventually when I had to move into the middle lane again, Wunderkind was on my backside and hooting like a mad thing. After giving a dismissive wave, I then moved into the right lane and miraculously Wunderkind appeared behind me sooner than what could have been safely achieved. Looking in my mirror I saw that Wunderkind was talking on his cellphone (without the aid of a hands-free or earpiece) and continuously moving halfway into the middle lane and back into the right lane without indicating. I showed him with a flashing motion of my hand that he should use his indicator, which incensed him even more so I decided to avoid him. All the while he was driving a bit too close to my backside so I moved back into the middle lane to allow him to pass since it seemed that he was suddenly in a dangerous hurry.

It was here where I slowed down to allow Wunderkind to pass sooner so that I could avoid him and his dangerous driving tendencies. Now he decided that he wouldn't pass me and he started braking suddenly in so doing forced the car behind him to brake suddenly and also start avoiding him.

When he eventually did pass, I saw that there was a child in a child seat on the back left hand seat..... Also some passengers. He was still talking on the cellphone. Why do people with children in the car drive dangerously? Children should be a reminder not to drive dangerously!

When he left the highway at the Rivonia Rd offramp, he was still talking on his cellphone.

If you see a Silver Mazda 6 with a registration number starting with TLP, avoid him because he is Wunderkind.