WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2006-12-30 Time: 00:00:00 Posted By: Jan
[This last while, with my trips south through the Free State (one of the original Boer Republics), I noticed something which I’ve seen there before but which struck me as being one of those very rare occasions in this country when you can say something nice about other people.
In the Orange Free State they have a number of highways which can be described at 1 1/2 lane highways. Effectively, the entire highway consists of 3 lanes. But, the width varies from 1 to 2 lanes. It is well designed for slopes. So when you’re going on an uphill stretch of road (normally), you’ll have 2 lanes so that you can overtake slower trucks. Then it will switch to 1 lane, giving traffic going in the opposite direction 2 lanes again. And so it goes on for hundreds of kilometres. So for the cost of only 3 lanes, you get many of the benefits of 2 lanes.
The road also has another cool design feature. They’ve created grooves so that if you fall asleep or lose concentration and you wander off the road or across the middle lane, then suddenly your car will hit these grooves and it will make a racket and help to wake you up!
But there is also a very wide emergency lane.
In the Free State people do the following when you’re on those stretches where you only have 1 lane. When they see a car coming up from behind, they pull over half way or even completely into the emergency lane to let you pass. Now, I don’t think there is any rule FORCING people to do this. I think this is all done willingly. So what happens is people often (but not always), pull partly off the road to let other faster cars pass and then when the cars pass, they switch on their hazards for a little while (but not always) as a way of saying “Thank You”.
Now given how absolutely hideous and unmannered drivers in this country are – trust me – I’ll show you photos of the complete opposite – where people are completely selfish to the highest degree imaginable – it makes a really nice change to just drive along a road where 80% of the people are actually courteous to you all the time.
When I went down to visit Richard in hospital, it had been almost a year since I’d driven in the Free State that I actually enjoyed pulling aside to let other cars pass and then to see if they’d “say Thank you”. Much of the time they did and it was quite fun having that feeling of being among courteous, thoughtful and well mannered people.
I was so taken by this behaviour that I meant to write about it a couple of times but kept forgetting. Sometimes the small things in life to matter and do make a difference don’t they? Jan]