No traveler to South America can possibly go home without one or two tales of their white knuckle gut ripping fear induced shit your pants experiences while out on the roads. It matters not whether it be by bus, car, motorcycle, bicycle or courageous pedestrian. I’ve personally accrued reams of them over the years and this trip is no exception. For whatever reason when a Colombian gets behind the wheel it becomes important to show their strong belief that the likes of A.J Foyt and Mario Andretti were mere amateurs. The wife will scold me whenever I make a statement like that and remind me that not “every” Colombian driver is a moronic mindless idiot with an oxygen starved brain and she would on technicality be correct as we know one … yes “one” Colombian who drives so slowly he might just as well get out and walk.
Road deaths in Colombia rose 24% last year over an already steep figure with over 60% of those being motorcyclists and 21% innocent pedestrians. I have little sympathy for the motorcyclists but the poor peds are being victimized by a set up. The Government has been taking steps to reduce these figures and here in our city traffic lights and stop signs have become the norm . There are even lights for pedestrians that warn when it’s theoretically safe to cross with the amount of seconds you have to make it across and on appearance that seems a good idea. In reality it doesn’t take into account the incredibly high percentages of slow witted motorcyclists that will ignore the lights and stop signs and hare around the corners in waves to plow into the hapless peds trying to get across the road .
We’ve just returned from another trip up into the mountains with a guy we hire every year to drive us to places public transport can’t and for some reason I had those statistics on my mind. As usual I had to remind him that we are never in such a hurry that we need to pass buses on blind corners or before we reach the crest of the hill. Convincing him that taking hard right bends on anything but four wheels wasn’t a bad idea either but it took a bit more effort. It was accomplished and we finally arrived at our mountain top village destination … alive. That’s when I got out of the car and noticed the balding rear tire worn down to the canvas ….
