Ten dead

So we were at work by 8, having driven past and round two road accidents on the highway. My two drama colleagues were also late in, having been delayed, as one put it, by the 'daily death'. He didn't know the half of it.

The laudable, if overdue, crackdown on speeders, light-jumpers and the assorted cretins and spoilt brats who infest our roads may have led to the police seizure of 3,174 cars in the past month, and a 42% reduction on October's fatalities (though a sizeable proportion of those would have been due to pre-Iftar low-blood-sugar mania and therefore not entirely valid for general stats), but it couldn't prevent 10 deaths this morning when the drivers of a minibus and schoolbus (?) full of labourers raced to overtake each other on the highway in that 6 a.m. rain I mentioned. One driver is dead, and the other is presumably in hospital with his numerous passengers who sustained multiple injuries.

Our school is right next to the highway. Sirens blared and helicopters beat the air overhead for most of the morning. How completely fucking stupid. Ten men are dead. Ten men who left their homes in China, India or Bangladesh for low-paid work in a desperately harsh environment, in order to provide financial security and educational opportunities for their families. Because two bloody morons decided to play their stupid games on one of the most dangerous roads on earth. Dangerous precisely because this kind of driving is so common. God almighty.

Am I being unduly harsh? These were the driving conditions this morning.










































This was the tailback on one side of the road. The other side matched, and both remained much the same until about 11 a.m.



And this was the type of bus which collided with a minibus, and then rolled over and over with forty men trapped inside.

Ten dead. Plenty more with multiple injuries.

And you know what?
There'll be something similar tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.
The daily death.