Terrors

Jayne is blogging about bombings in Afghanistan, and I can’t get out of my mind the different kind of terrorism we have in Ukraine – the murderous drivers. I’ve seen more than my share of the horrible aftermaths of reckless driving, from mangled and burnt cars to once a whole carload of chicken parts splayed across the road from what had once been the back end of a car.

I saw the worst I’ve even seen on Saturday. Stuck in one traffic jam, I tried an alternate route only to end up in another traffic jam. I learned soon enough what was the problem – two people in the middle of the road, in pools of blood. I drove slowly past, my hands shaking and vision clouded by tears. I noticed a woman standing nearby crying, and a man talking on his cell phone. Calling an ambulance, I hope. There was a plastic bag a couple lanes away from them – was it their’s? Had they been crossing the street to the riverside park? Or perhaps, having had a fun afternoon with friends, they were crossing back to find their car and head home? Were they holding hands when they crossed? Were they laughing about the great day they had had, or were going to have? I saw both of them move slightly, so I know at least at that moment I was passing by they were alive. Are they today? Or did their suffering end on that road?

It was a bad choice to cross the busy road where they did, no doubt. But I can also imagine the maniac driver who slammed into them. Possibly the same one who swerved in front of me later that day because he just had to be in front of me even though there was a semi-truck barreling down in the oncoming lane, forcing the asshole to cut me off so he could squeeze in between me and the next car (and it wasn’t that I was going slow – it was a freaking traffic jam!). Or maybe it was the driver who zoomed past me on the right-hand berm because there was already a car passing me on the left (again in a traffic jam). Or the SUV that nearly slammed into me, flashing his lights and screeching his horn at me because I had the nerve to “only” be going 130 km/hour on the highway. Or maybe it was the guy who flew around the line of stopped cars at a traffic light in the center of Kyiv, driving not only in the lane for oncoming traffic but right across the intersection against the red light. Didn’t even slow down to look for cars or pedestrians.

I hate them. I hate all the selfish, thoughtless assholes. I often tell people that Ukraine is a good place to live because it is relatively safe – no wars, very little crime, rare natural disasters. But the terrorist drivers are forcing me to change my tune. You take your life in your hands on the streets here. You’re not even safe on the sidewalks, where cars drive if the traffic is jammed on the street or, god forbid, just not moving fast enough for the Special Ones. I would happily give them all Darwin Awards, except they don’t just weed themselves out of the gene pool; they have a nasty tendency to take others out with them. Like suicide terrorists. And also like many suicide terrorists, what they hope to accomplish is incomprehensible.