Ban cars? Terrible accident on Brixton Hill tonight.
(my rant posted on the bulletin boards last night)
There’s too many emotions spinning through my head right now to construct a coherent post, so i’ll describe what happened instead: me, Eme and Han were walking down Brixton Hill after a fabulous, friendly and fun night at PROD (at the Windmill).
Half way down the hill, I noticed a speeding silver car accelerating so fast up the hill that I muttered to myself, “wanker”.
Two seconds later we heard a massive ‘crump’ and turned around to see the silver car smashing into the shop frontage next to the old cinema, sparks coming off the car and acrid smoke filling the air.
The car had smashed, head on, into a black car coming down the hill which (I think) was stopped at the red light. It looked like he’d jumped a red light, swerved to avoid a car coming from the left, hit the black car and bounced into the shop.
Huge sparks continued to come from the wheels of the silver car that, initially suggesting that the driver was trying to make an escape. I rang the police as we walked up to the car.
Before I’d finished the call, the police were there, anxiously smashing the crashed car’s windows open: apparently the speeding driver was seriously injured. Moments later, I heard one cop ask the other “is he still breathing?”. I didn’t hear his response.
So here’s why I feel such a mix of emotions. If han hadn’t been with us, we may well have been walking on the side of the road that the driver smashed into. In fact, had we left a few moments after, the car could have hit us.
Much as I hate to see any human suffering, a part of me has no sympathy whatsoever for the driver. He was hurtling up Brixton Hill so fucking fast that he may as well been waving a knife around and threatening pedestrians. He clearly didn’t give a fuck.
But another part of me wants to rant and get angry about the whole fucking car industry that promotes fast cars. Why should any car need to be able to accelerate so fast?
Why should it be acceptable that cars can go so ridiculously fast? They’re fantastic tools for transporting people, but why the need for dangerously high speeds?
Cars pollute. Cars can destroy village life and separate communities. Cars are noisy. Cars kill children. The car industry encourages people to drive faster.
There’s no denying that cars are useful things, but as oil reserves dwindle, is it right that car culture is still aggressively promoted?
Maybe the speeding twat tonight was just another victim of smooth, persuasive advertising that convinced him that driving fast made him a bigger man. Maybe peer pressure dictated that driving recklessly marked him out as a big man. Or maybe he was just another drunk driver.
Fuck, I’m too angry and upset to be able to offer a coherent argument…
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