01 December 2009

One of my perennial (petty and stupid) rants

You may have noticed that I rant, quite a lot, on my blog about driving in Spain. Here's a perfect illustration of the attitude to driving over here that provokes the aforementioned rants. I don’t want to be too sweeping but, many people here approach driving & road use with the kind of selfishness that would normally be preserved for something more tangibly own-able, like chocolate, or Crunchy Nut Cornflakes. It’s an “I-own-the-road-and-have-the-right-to-do-precisely-as-I-please-without-regard-for-other-road-users” attitude.

The picture was taken of the road outside my house. As you can see, it’s a smallish two way side street in Madrid. I watched the guy park, actually let’s call it what it is; I watched the guy dump his car. It wasn’t that the space was tight; he simply could not be bothered to park properly, nor was he nipping in and back out; the Mercedes stayed parked like that for 3 days.

Ok, next post will not be driving related. Promise.