PapiMami

Wednesday, August 25, 2004

Convoy Part 2

Not again. Cheh!!

This morning around 8.45am, while travelling to work on the NKVE, we met with another Merdeka convoy. This time it was scooters. There must be about 100 scooters with a police outrider in front and a few big army trucks following behind and a couple of Perdanas and Kembaras.

They were travelling about 60 km/h (!!) on the highway and with no one to guide the traffic (except for the one police outrider in front), it was chaos.

Initially we were joining the NKVE from the Elite highway (near the Bukit Jelutong intersection), when we stopped for the convoy to pass thru. The convoy must have stretched over a distant of 300 metres. When the convoy have passed, we continued on behind the convoy.

The convoy being at the left most lane and travelling at a crawling speed of 60km/h, cars started to overtake them from the 2 right most lane, including us. We were travelling in the middle lane. It wasn't long before we realise "Ooopss....something's wrong". You see, we were right about in the middle of the convoy, they were on the left, we were on the right, and our turning is about 100 metres away. We can't wait until the entire convoy pass us, that would mean to stop right in the middle of the highway. So we slowed down a bit to wait for the right chance to get to the left safely.

There was a big gap between a Kembara and a Perdana who were part of the convoy. So I signaled to the left. The Kembara ( yeah, f**k you too, B** 5803) realising that she was way behind and I was between her and the Perdana, stepped on her gas, and tried to overtake me. She was tailgating me and honking furiously, and I can see her on my rear-view mirror cursing the hell out of me. WTF? Several time she tried to overtake me and force me to the emergency lane. I signaled to her that I wanted to exit the highway and turn left. Mami said, "why don't you give her the standard Malaysian greeting?". I kept my cool. At the end, I managed to exit, and I can see many more cars were stuck in the same position. A Honda City stopped right in the middle of middle lane. I really hope no major accident happen.

Which got me thinking. Why can't they organise this when there is less traffic rather than the time when everybody is rushing to work? Why can't they manage the traffic more proffesionally and safely? And there should be more police to manage the convoy.