Hazardous

On the way home from work today in my car I was much perturbed by an happenstance which took place before me.

There was a car in front of me, and another in front of that, but the crux of this tale focuses not on these, but on the vehicle just in front of them.

I could not see the colour nor the variety of this car, as it was dark already by this point, nor am I able to discern the details merely from its shape, as cars really are not my area of expertise nor interest.

The car in question was driving in an aggravating manner, and the specific area of driving in which it was aggravating was in the area of its speed. It was going at the wrong speed. We (the drivers and the cars) were in a zone which had been decreed by the government as a 40 miles per hour zone. This means that you are able to drive at that agreed speed in this area, and no higher. Of course, it is completely legally acceptable to drive at a slower pace, although it is generally frowned upon by red-blooded drivers. And also horned upon.

The car in question was driving at around 10 miles per hour lower than the highest point of allowed speed, clocking in at around 30 miles per hour. I felt that this was slightly too fast to be genuinely annoying, and yet not fast enough for me to feel the benefit of the 40 zone, which I was using in order to minimise the time it would take me to get home.

It was too fast to briskly and comfortably overtake the car, especially with the bulk of traffic coming the other way, it would have been too dangerous a manoeuvre to attempt, especially bearing in mind that my car is not the Batmobile, nor the car used by Inspector Gadget. The Gadgetmobile?

More distressing than this, however, was the insistence of the car to drive with its hazard lights flashing. This confused me, as the car was still moving steadily, and yet it was proudly broadcasting the fact that it was a hazard. I wondered whether the car was towing the one behind it, and indicating this with its hazards. No, it was not. It was merely, in a subtle, undetectable way, being hazardous. We approached a junction, and I turned off the road and went over a bridge (always lovely) rather than trailing behind the hazardous car on the new road. This detour surely added precious seconds to my journey, and unquestionably resulted in the death of at least two seals. Which I now must wipe off my bumper.

The feeling I experienced in reaction to this hazard-car was not annoyance, or anger. It was far from road rage. It was more an illogical, deeply rooted unease, a feeling that something is intrinsically but indefinably wrong, such as when the volume on my radio is on an odd number rather than an even number.

This was mean't to be an examination of how little events can affect you in strange ways, but nothing of note happened on the alternative route home. Perhaps if I'd followed the car with its hazards on, or the Duke of Hazards which I am not calling it, I would have been killed in a huge towering blaze started when their hazard lights got really hot and did an explosion, transforming the reasonably paced car into a coasting fireball.

Probably all that would have happened is I would have gotten home and written a slightly different blog.

Sometimes, a butterfly in flaps its wings on the other side of the world, and all that happens is it gets caught in a butterfly hunter's net. That's right, hunter.

Although sometimes a butterfly flaps its wings on the other side of the world and is struck by a nuclear blast, and we all know what happens in that instance.