Invincible Not?

This confession is not going to make me look good. I used to drive fast. Used to. And FAST. Granted my current top speed limit is 100 kmph right now (with kids, the limit goes down to 80 kmph), it’s hard to see that side of me now. I remember very clearly when I was in college and having just gotten my driver’s license, I thought I was pretty good at navigating a rough bend. I thought it was pretty cool too to catch up with the big rough guys on highways in my father’s run-down Peugeot (that is about a MILLION YEARS OLD with a broken carburetor) just to see the look of surprise on their faces and occasionally, when the mood hits me, I reward them with a middle finger. And it didn’t do me any good either that my then-boyfriend (ahem….you know who you are) was a fast driver as well. Not just fast because if I was fast, he and his gang were faster. What was the name you guys had for your gang already ah? Pak Rempit, right? :-) Anyway, when these guys head out for their usual racing sessions, I would sit in the passenger seat busy cheering him on, occasionally throwing stuff out of the window at the guys behind or maybe flashing them my famous finger as well. I get as wild as to climb halfway out of the window just to cheese them off. Fear was never there. Thinking about it now makes me worry about myself lest my wild young self decide to make a reappearance in my current life. Ha ha ha….. I worry about the young today because of the rising number of traffic accidents in highways and other roads as well. Particularly motorcyclist who foolishly think that they are damn good and are invincible. They zip in and out of lanes without a care in the world. Never anticipating anything to happen to them in the event that someone (or themselves) was careless. One split moment is all it takes. Yet, these bloody people on bikes can smoke, chat on the phone and sometimes text messages some more when they’re riding their bikes? Don’t they know what road safety is all about? And the other thing that bothers me is that parents sometimes take their kids to and from school on their bikes. I understand that not everyone can afford a car but at least put the helmets on your kids lah! And I loathe the sight of a parent riding with their kids swinging in the back as they throttle on. Some of them are as young as six or eight, maybe. Helmetless and just hanging on to their parent’s shirt in the back….At least, they should put their kids in front of them. Sometimes, they have more than two kids on the same bike, can you imagine that? As in three child pillion riders and one adult on a bike spells nothing but T.R.O.U.B.L.E. I think the new government should hire vans or buses to bring these kids to and from school free of charge instead of letting the parents endanger the kids’ lives like that! If the government said that we all have to pay a little bit to help bring these kids to and from school, then OK, I contribute. And I don’t understand how some parents can allow their seven or eight year old kids to walk to school all alone, crossing highways and such??!! Where’s the sense? Didn’t a recent advertisement on television just reminded us that children’s viewd are not as good as ours…not to mention their judgment of distance and speed!? Bikes, kids, speeding demons and careless motorists…..sigh. Such is our culture. But then again, who am I to talk, right? All I can say is that I’ve been there, done that and am thanking my lucky stars that I am still here today writing this blog entry.