Coincidentally I had been watching a damning report on the foreign news about the incredible number of motorists in the UK who never undertook regular eye tests, leading to a high percentage of motorists not actually being ‘fit for purpose’.
A few hours later I was sitting in the passenger seat of our MPV wedged against a road’s edge as a mini van edged majestically up the road, and even with the best part of a metre on the left of the van we were side-swiped in our nearly new, very expensive and much loved car.
There is no way this incident would have occurred had the mini bus driver been nearer to the nearside wall. Arguments are always futile but so was the demand that as there was no centre line, both drivers should go 50:50. When I compiled the Highway Code, no mention was made of this fascinating piece of folklore.
I will go further and say that if any driver finds it impossible to judge distance on either side of his or her vehicle it is time to visit an optician, and for any professional driver to find himself or herself in this position it is a duty to sort out his/her peripheral vision or give up on the noble art and immense responsibility of driving, until the problem has been seen to.
Shortly after the incident, I edged across the car, walked down the hill to the only crossroads where Manikata and Mellieħa traffic could be directed up the concrete road to bypass the blocked road, and then, as wardens took 90 minutes to reach the crash, I happily directed traffic up the concrete road so that traffic chaos would not be the natural order of the day. Had I not done this stint, dozens of vehicles large and small would have been obliged to reverse for over a couple of hundred metres.
It was hot and entirely rewarding as most vehicles acknowledged me with a cheerful wave and wended their way upward. One or two locals had questions and one suggested that the concrete road should be One Way into the village, allowing the normal road to be One Way towards Golden Bay.
As the old road is frankly too narrow for the traffic that attempts to use it I found this suggestion worthy of Mellieħa council looking into most seriously.
It also has to be a serious ‘offence’ that no warden could reach Manikata for over 60 sweltering minutes.
If any driver finds it impossible to judge the distance on either side of his or her vehicle it is time to visit an optician
• We seldom bother to mention roads that are in need of repair, but really our major road – Route 1 – needs considerable detail repair. The hill at Bahar iċ-Ċagħaq needs to be not only resurfaced, but also cambered properly to stop people sliding off course during rainstorms.
The section from Għallis corner to the junction with the Naxxar Road requires a proper surface. The Naxxar turn, of course, still causes fantastic delays as it is beyond the experts at Transport Malta (TM) to place traffic lights, possibly vehicle controlled, at this junction. And no, a roundabout is not the answer, as we still have to give way to traffic on the right.
As it appears to be technically impossible to force vehicles into a Left Turn Only at the junction of the Coast Road with Kennedy Drive, weekend visitors to St Paul’s Bay and beyond are still arriving up to an hour late as the aforementioned junction is the scene of super delays and a multitude of minor crashes.
If a parcel of land were to be requisitioned and the road made wider at the junction with Kennedy Grove and Drive, much of the traffic snarl up would disappear.
TM seems to be in a state of limbo as there is some fanciful plan being hatched (we were talking about it in the Traffic Control Board in 1996) and the gestation period goes on and on and on.
We then pick up a lousy section of Route 1 again soon after coming off the St Paul’s Bay Bypass, and this section well beyond the roundabout for Mellieħa; in fact, continuing to the new roundabout at the Manikata junction is considerably less promising than the many new sections of road that have been completed in the past 12 months.
In case the senior managers within the Traffic Management section of TM think I may have forgotten the multitude of unwanted and very expensive signs on the Salina-Naxxar Road, I most certainly have not.
I suggest someone at TM gets their act in order, and if they have the skills, removes the unwanted signs, and as a matter of high priority makes good the damage to the centre line and side markers; magnificent at night, and in places, impossible to understand during the hours of daylight.