Haven't been to the airport in...ahem....a really long time (unfortunately.) But apparently there is a new guardian of traffic.....this lovely robot- which is a grand excuse for another traffic story. While it's amazing that the robot is outfitted with a surveillance camera....I'm just not sure what it plans to do with the photos. And I have an incredibly hard time believing motorists will accept the guidance of mere metal.
Mostly due to what I witnessed yesterday.....which made me nostalgic (not for the first time) for those 4-way stop sign intersections. You know the ones....you arrive there at the same time as another car, you both start to go, make eye contact and then wave each other on...which then results in a bit of confusion about who should actually go first because you are both just too polite to make the move. Inevitably you both sit for a minute pondering the situation before someone makes the go ahead.
In Kinshasa however, things don't go exactly like that. My "favorite" carrefour- 4-way intersection- has a completely different ambiance. Arriving here, one must make a death-defying dash across the roadway, forcing the vehicle in between oncoming traffic, turning taxis and pedestrians. No one stops to let anyone else pass. Even in the presence of the policewoman trying her hardest to maintain order and direct traffic.
Yesterday as we were passing through, she had her arms out and back facing the other lane. A clear signal for them to stop. We had the "green." But the large taxi buses didn't stop and kept turning into our lane despite her signal and my furious hand gestures and screaming at them. "Ce claire, ce vous qui doit arrete!" They didn't really care, just smiled and shrugged and kept on driving. Until there is an accident. Which was bound to happen. One of the large taxi buses hit another large SUV trying to make the turn. The policewoman was now completely surround by cars on all sides, each at their own angle directly aimed at an oncoming vehicle. A real life pick up stix game with no clear solution on who should- or even can- move first to unravel the whole mess. The two drivers involved in the accident begin shouting at one another, which is a process that must run it's full course, further blocking traffic until they've each exhausted themselves.
Most incredulously, after the heated screaming match, they both drove away, one with a patch of scratches and white paint on his front bumper. No insurance reports, no police reports, no police comment on the entire affair in fact and...I guess, no harm done- this time.
While I am impressed to hear that it was a woman's engineering group that came up with the robot model.....I think the aspect they are truly missing is the social/legal implications. There needs to be consequences. In the wild west of Kinshasa, you can easily drive on the wrong side of the road, drive on the sidewalk, pass on the left- or the right- drive down the middle of the road creating the infamous "third lane" and sometimes even a fourth and fifth lane or whatever other driving whims you might have in the moment (stopping in the middle of the road to take on or discharge passengers for example.)
The robot is reported to be able to change height (if I am reading that right....it gets a little hedgy with the French) and so perhaps it wouldn't be too much to add in a mechanism where it can descend from it's perch and tap drivers over the head when they commit an infraction. Just a little tap.
UPDATE: The very same day I wrote this post, I ended up driving past the robot. Turns out it's not very near the airport just out by the palace du peuple. It wasn't impressive or imposing. In fact, if I hadn't written this, I might not have even noticed it. I wasn't driving so that makes a bit of a difference, but it blended in with all the other metal of the traffic. It wasn't very tall and didn't stand out at all. We were half way past it before I even realized it. In the end, I can see it would never be the threatening figure that would be able to get down and give wayward drivers a wallop.
