Lethal little old lady in the making

Last night in the dusk I returned from a ride and went to the mall. A
car crawled behind me and just when I got to the corner turned across
me, missing my front tyre by half an inch, but only because I was
already turning the bars into the pavement. I put one foot on the
sidewalk and was about to use the other one to put a large dent in the
car door when I saw the L plate. Round here people get a provisional
licence and can then drive without supervision to gain experience, as
long as they show the L plate front and back; once upon a time
hundreds of thousands of people drove for life on a provisional
licence but now they must take a test every two years.

I rode behind this crawling little car until it stopped again, then
went to tap on the passenger side window so as not to seem too
intimidating to a learner driver. (Anyone else, for such a gross
offense I would have, for openers, hit a dent into the roof just
behind the driver's head with my large Swiss Army knife. For a
minimum, when someone endangers my life and limbs, I hit the roof
behind the driver ringingly with the flat of my hand to wake him up
and announce that I'm not in the mood for taking **** from morons.)

The window rolls down. A blond ferret crouches grimly in the driver's
seat, mouth set, the wheel strangled in a death-grip. You don't need
any further evidence to know she will forever be dangerous driver.

"Miss, let me give you a tip. When you are behind a bicycle and you
want to turn, you wait until the bicycle has passed through the
crossroads. If you turn across the bicycle, you dent your little car,
perhaps even hurt someone, which would make you uninsurable and
therefore unable to drive. What will your daddy say then?"

When I was young, we would have said, "Thank you sir, and I trust you
won't tell him if I don't do it again." This little old lady in the
making just stared at me blankly and then rolled up the window.

And nearly caused another accident by turning across me again, and yet
another close shave not ten yards further where she just rode straight
across a stream of cars coming out the parking lot and following the
road.

I felt privileged to be there at the birth of a lethal little old lady
in the making. In two or three years Daddy will have bought her a
bigger car and she won't even open the window when people tap on it to
object to her running them down. Sooner or later she will maim or kill
someone.

***

It's the system that is crook. I have done exactly what she has done,
perhaps once or twice in a lifetime, certainly not all on the same day
(1); so have most motorists if they recollect honestly. But she will
do it consistently, daily, for the rest of her life. And how can the
police act against her? She's not speeding, not going the wrong way up
one-way streets, just having tiny little bumps because she's trying so
hard, she doesn't see. Charge her with negligent driving and the case
will never get to court for fear of bringing the law into disrepute.
But one does wonder which driving tester gave her a provisional
licence...

Andre Jute
Never more brutal than he has to be -- Nelson Mandela