Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Rhinocratic Oaths

I drive to work most days. A 90 mile round trip from North London to a featureless business park just outside Reading. This morning, with a hint of frost in the air I saw two cars get wiped out completely. One was just behind me as we left the M4 at junction 10, took the bend too quickly, lost it and went down the embankment, and the other car following got into a panic on seeing the previous accident and spun hitting the barrier on both sides of the road. I watched all this carnage taking place in my rear view mirror. 100 yards further on there was a four car pile up on the other side of the road and another 400 yards down the A329 were four more cars that had scattered various component parts about the place. It's not unusual to see accidents at this exact spot - every few months someone does something similar. My car got into a slide there a few years back but fortunately I didn't lose it completely and have taken that turning 10mph slower ever since. Life is too sweet.

1 comment:

The Aunt said...

I once saw something like this happen immediately behind me on the Paris périphérique.

Scary, isn't it. You think, what if I'd been one car behind that idiot? And you lengthen your distance to the car in front.