Stocks and snares...

Driving along the roads of the South Coast is becoming a misery, writes CHRIS BENNETT.

YOU know, I am really sick and tired of it. I did not devise the speed limits on our roads, although I seem to have little trouble understanding the nature of the road surface, its route and width and why the speed limit imposed was chosen. It is not, to use that silly expression, rocket science.

But living near Munster and driving regularly to Margate, Port Edward or, God forbid, the depressing Port Shepstone, I am constantly obliged to break the law or drive dangerously.

Taxi drivers; what breed of vipers spawned these loathsome creatures beats me. I was overtaken a couple of days ago (I was traveling well above the 80km/h limit), by some crazed hooligan driving one of these new larger than life death traps which the government, in its exquisite insanity, seems to have thought might save lives. Well they won't. There will be just as many accidents, only with a much more efficient death rate. Lots of lovely mothers and pregnant schoolgirls.

This particular vehicle (with an Eastern Cape registration) overtook me, downhill, at the approach to the San Lameer Country Club. The irony may have escaped the driver's attention. Needless to say there was a sleek Mercedes (a bit like Chris Bangle's awful BMWs, but a little less crass) heading for an eternal meeting with this amazing, overladen (my impression) 'taxi'.

I slowed down and looked for an escape route. The 'taxi' missed the headlight-flashing Merc by about a metre.

What is it with all these stupifyingly mindless people who must travel as fast as the laws of physics will allow? So they get there 45 seconds earlier than expected. So?

The apologists tell me that it is all the fault of the taxi owners, who impose too heavy a demand on their drivers. Balls. (For tennis, of course. This is, after all a family newspaper).

Boris Johnson has the answer.

He, the Mayor of London, recently wrote in the Telegraph that the first thing the next British prime minister should do is to get rid of the fleet of ministerial cars. I hope you are reading this Mme Mayor. They serve, the cars that is, no recognisable purpose, beyond the bolstering of the occupant’s sense of self-importance.

Much the same can be said about those drivers who cannot contain themselves with in the speed limits set by our, presumably, well-informed legislators.

I am not very much in favour of the death penalty because it carries so little humiliation. Can't we bring back the stocks?

The very idea of the national education minister, one Blade Nzimanze, being provided with a R1,1 million car (another Bangle kitschstuk) is a neat comment on the political party of which he is not only a member but a leader, or Comrade in Chief. What is wrong with the bus?

Those who know about these things will no doubt explain that it is the poor man’s insecurity that causes this sort of thing.

Anyone for tennis?

PS: Chris Bangle is an Englishman who lives in California and designs motorcars for the Bavarian Motor Works.