IF HE'S WEARING A HAT, LOSE THE TWAT

I feel compelled by my first, and hopefully only, road traffic accident on Brazilian tarmac to spit vitriol about motoring in the fourth most populous democracy in the world. Said collision wasn’t a death-defying forty-vehicle pileup so popular in these parts, it was one of those maddeningly petty knocks that drives the front-seat passenger into a simmering, understated and very British rage that steams up the car windows, whilst the Latin-blooded driver directs language that would be more fitting at a prison uprising at the gap-toothed agricultural labourer cum lorry driver who braked his jalopy using the rear of our stationary hatchback. One of those ball-achingly unnecessary incidents that leaves just enough damage to need costly professional repair, whilst not achieving a level of violence sufficient to merit an insurance claim.

The success of motor racing icons such as Emerson Fittipaldi, Nelson Piquet and Ayrton Senna may have given their countrymen much to cheer about, but it also instilled in a generation of wholly less talented wheelmen wildly dangerous delusions of grandeur. Added to this the pervasive conviction that “the law was made for everyone else”, and the result is that highly competitive motorists routinely experiment with innovative manoeuvres such as overtaking via the hard shoulder, or where they are explicitly prohibited to do so by double lines in the middle of the road. The results of such flirtations with fate are often catastrophic.

Once, when I was returning home on the works bus from the metallurgical factory where I worked, on negotiating a bend we were greeted with what appeared to be the aftermath of a particularly brutal car bomb attack, such was the sheer volume of mangled debris strewn across the road. It transpired that a young lad had been picked up at the factory by his father and brother, and had demanded to get behind the wheel, having recently passed his driving test. On the ten-minute drive home, on a short straight leading into a blind corner, he had confidently pulled out to overtake a solid line of cars, only for a pitiless Mercedes Benz truck to appear coming in the opposite direction. Unable to return to his side of the highway, in the fraction of a second he had to decide how to escape a sickening impact, he swerved onto the opposite hard shoulder, trusting that the truck would safely breeze past. However, great minds thought alike, and the truck ploughed into his car with such force that the boot (trunk, for US readers) was propelled into the dense tropical undergrowth and has never been found. Pops and brother both died instantly in an impact that virtually scythed the car in two down the middle. The driver was left deeply shocked, conscious and trapped in the smouldering wreckage.

There is also the widespread tendency for adolescent males to “rebaixar” their cars. This involves installing special low suspension, or, for less affluent drivers, sawing pieces off the existing springs, this pimping of their ride invariably being accompanied by American hip-hop tunes played at ear-bleedingly loud volumes. It is always wise to avoid getting too close to these wildly erratic motorists, though the occupants of a car with low suspension should not always necessarily be assumed to be gangsta wannabes – it could well be three generations of up to four different families packed into their Volkswagen Brasilia on their way to a barbecue.

Another important aggravating factor is the lack of any regulation concerning the state of repair of automobiles on Brazil’s thoroughfares. Whereas in Britain the annual Ministry of Transport Test (MOT) rigidly checks the roadworthiness of Britain’s vehicles, in Brazil, if the obligation to take such a test exists, it is never applied. If you don’t pay your Road Tax, you will have your car confiscated by the Polícia Rodoviária (my favourite wing of the police, as the most efficient, polite and lightly-armed), but you will be happily waved on at a police checkpoint in an ageing Volkswagen Beetle with one dim headlight and no taillights. Outside São Paulo state, those roads that are asphalted present a challenging pattern of potholes of varying depths and sizes.

By far the most deadly factor in determining the level of danger a driver presents, however, is none of the above – it is the use of hats. If a driver is wearing headgear, you can be sure he will do something ludicrously reckless in the next few kilometers, so my advice, concocted as an easy-to-remember rhyming couplet is: If he’s wearing a hat, lose the twat. Maybe it is the false sense of security the use of headwear instills in drivers, but it is a truism that the behatted driver is a menace that should be avoided at all costs, either by slowing to let him get away, or speeding up and leaving him for dust. Of course, if the hat is accompanied by a Police uniform, this advice should be amended accordingly, unless you want to be subjected to the erratic and impulsive use of firearms.

Do you wear a hat when driving? Are you a twat? What is driving like in your country? The best answers may be turned into an informative TEFL discussion class, properly credited of course.