Drive carefully! Big Brother is watching you!
When I first came to Spain fourteen years ago and started writing this blog, I found myself constantly commenting of the awful behaviour of drivers. How could I not? Everywhere you looked someone was doing something absolutely stupid and they were paying for it with their lives.
It suddenly occurred to me that now I can do a round trip without someone doing something that attracts my attention for its outrageous action. On the odd occasion when some boy racer cuts up the traffic everybody is shocked and sickened by such irresponsible behaviour. This is good! It is very good that we have all grown up to a point where bad behaviour is not taken for granted with a shrug of the shoulders. It is seen as something that is out of the ordinary and is to be condemned. It also places a heavy burden on me to avoid being the won who attracts attention.
The other thing that is a little more subtle is that drinking alcohol before driving has taken a change for the better within the Spanish culture. Many of us foreigners came from communities where the campaign against driving while drunk had been effective. I am not a big drinker but when the DGT began its crack down I was easily persuaded to simply stop all alcohol if I needed to drive.
It was difficult at first because my hosts could not understand how I could enjoy myself if I didn't have a real drink in hand. Eventually they have come to acept that this is possible and now, if I asked for alcohol I believe that they wouldn't comply. I knew that something was happening when I heard more than one Spanaird say that he was driving and would not take alcohol.
So, good for us, we are on the way to living longer because we are less likely to be killed by some lunatic driving while drunk.
I don't mind if such people have to kill themselves, I just mind that they feel they have to take some innocent with them.
Copyright (c) 2013 Eugene Carmichael
