Highway to Hell

I have been driving in Singapore for more than 10 years, frequently across the island from west to the east and east to the west, which happens to be about the longest distance to go in a car on this tiny island. When I was learning to drive, I was a little afraid and drove cautiously; sometimes too slow for my driving instructor's liking and he would comment that the main objective to learn driving is to get to your destination quickly (implying if I drove any slower, might be faster taking the public transport, ha!). So when I first got my car, I sped about and it helps the fact that at that time I had worked shift hours, so the roads were empty in the wee hours of the morning and all I wanted was just to get home real fast to sleep. Of course there are times when there's traffic and all I could do was manage an average of 50 km/h journey. I was new to driving and monitored all my drives; the interesting thing I found was that no matter how fast I drove, even on the furthest route, for the same distance, at the very best, the difference was no more than 5 minutes - which is just about the time you spend in the toilet to take a leak or for me, most of it wasted lazing on the couch after a tiring drive. I have a pilot friend who tells me the same thing - even for an airplane to fly from Singapore to Europe, no matter how much faster he pushes the aircraft, at most it only makes a difference of a couple of minutes (and aircraft instrumentation is very precise).

The only real impact to my journey time is whether there's a traffic jam, usually caused by some accident - which brings me to the main point: some people drive so fast and so recklessly that they're just an accident waiting to happen. Their desire to go faster and get ahead of the next vehicle may lead to some getting into an accident; and all that causes is they get miserable and are much more delayed (not only for themselves but others too). Many people know the story of the race between the hare and the tortoise but in actual fact, don't understand or practise the simple logic of slow and steady wins the race! Of course, there's the other extreme of driving too slow till it becomes road hogging which I will not discuss in this post. It seems the people who are in fact amongst the worst drivers in our society, who can't even handle their cars well, are those who believe themselves to be race car driver quality and have expensive cars. Their ego and character drives them to want to speed without care of the immense risk they subject themselves and other road users.

My pilot friend and I just saw another driver speeding and cutting lanes indiscriminately. We really wonder what kind of emergency he was rushing for that can't even wait a couple of minutes; or maybe he really needs to go to the toilet (that's probably the only valid logical reason)? My pilot friend says he got it all figured out, "I know! They're just rushing to go and meet their maker!".