Wednesday 10th December, 2014            1200

Completely bonkers considering there was light rain, but this morning I made a round trip of an hour purely to have a Mcbreakfast! It would be more convenient for me to bake a loaf of bread (since the baguettes appeared in RT Mart I haven’t baked any!), grill bacon, sausage and tomatoes and fry a couple of eggs. It wouldn’t have been any more expensive either.

However I wouldn’t have seen the accident at the major crossroads near McD’s. Nobody appeared to have suffered anything other than perhaps bruised buttocks and a bit of a bill for repairs, luckily. Actually I never saw it, just heard an almighty crash and observed the aftermath a split second after. Car versus e-bike there is always only one winner but in this case it was two e-bikes. There were no winners at all.

Being a major junction there are traffic lights and judging by the angle of both bikes when they collided at full speed, one of them (no idea which) had proceeded through a red light as they were 90 degrees from each other. Both bikes and occupants (one was a solo woman, the other two women) went flying. It did cross my mind that as I am not as lithe or light as perhaps I once was, were I involved I could well have ended up with another sojourn in hospital having yet more metal implanted. All three girls did get up, seemingly the bikes were in worse shape than they were, in fact the lid of one of the top boxes was carried away down the road by the wind. Not one car stopped to shield them from the traffic even though they were slap bang in the middle of a busy junction, neither did anyone go to see if they needed assistance. By the time I had walked closer they had wheeled their contraptions to the side of the road where presumably financial considerations (other than exchanging insurance details, for there won’t have been any) were discussed. Nobody appeared distressed in a way that medical attention was required so I went back and waited for my return bus.

Some time ago someone sent me a YouTube clip of “nightmare drivers in China” which had a medley of accidents, most of which involved a car and an e-bike. I would stake good money that every single one of them was a case of the bike running a red light. Why? A few reasons but a couple are 1) in China any accident regardless of blame, the car driver has to pay for any expenses medical or otherwise for the e-bike rider or pedestrian and 2) those that ride e-bikes mostly haven’t taking driving lessons. I run red lights all the time (no number plate and no licence to endorse) but I make damned sure the coast is clear before I do so. The rest don’t so much as glance left or right, they assume the cars will avoid them in the same way pedestrians cross busy roads and deliberately look away from the way the cars are coming, trusting the cars to avoid them and if not, paying their hospital bills (or more likely their funeral costs).

Another thing is the zebra crossing here. As for the ones with no traffic lights, they may as well not exist. I have never seen a vehicle stop for anyone using one, including me. The ones with the green and red man? Not much difference. Vehicles (including buses) turning right honk at you and try to run you down even when you have priority. When you consider that learner drivers have to have a mandatory (although I believe this is to be changed soon and they won’t even have to go to an approved driving school - heaven help us) 24 hours of instruction, it is incredible that the moment they walk away clutching their licence they then proceed to drive as if they were pedestrians in a shopping centre. I suppose it’s another way of keeping the population down, as is the doctrine of foot traffic walking so their back is to the flow of traffic. THAT is utter madness.

Update on Mum. Aside from gobbling up all the biscuits I take her on the late night walkies, the pups are now at the stage where they venture a foot or so out of the “kennel” and in one instance that I witnessed, are berated by Mum for getting too close to her food. Interestingly, I now count seven of the little blighters so one must have been buried underneath the others at the last count. The “new” one actually has a hint of dark brown, thus spoiling the domino appearance of the rest. One can but hope by the time the school closes down they will all have flown the nest and be able to forage for themselves and more importantly, evade capture should the killers be brought in - although I don’t think they have put an appearance in for eighteen months or so. Lately I think some of the dogs have left simply because of the lack of food being dropped, at least I hope so.