I Fucking Despair

So, it's a new year and I greet it numb with shock and a great deal of anger.  After losing our beautiful friend Heidi to a drunk driver on November 10th, we start 2016 minus another friend killed in an equally senseless, reckless manner yesterday.  

Our friend Linda was ON A CROSSWALK, when she was ploughed into by a car and killed instantly.  Even from her devastated partner of seventeen years, from whom we just returned home after spending two hours trying to comfort him, details are scant as I type.  But, as this occurred in broad daylight, at around 2:00pm, it would seem that the driver was either plain stupid, drunk, 'distracted' - perhaps by texting or updating his or her fucking Facebook status (which from today should permanently read 'Killer') - or, well, who knows?  It hardly matters, does it, as Linda is dead.  Shot in the head, natural causes, tragic accident or killed by some bastard who evidently should not be on the road, dead is fucking dead.

I fucking DESPAIR of many of the drivers in this town.  Every single day I walk to work, without fail, I witness irresponsible, moronic or dangerous driving that makes my blood boil.  It is usually no more than two minutes after I've left the house that I'll see my first non-signalling asshole, turning in either direction from 2nd onto Pine, or from Pine onto Wentworth, not a care in the world, like they're the only driver on the road.  I'll see tailgaters, speeding vehicles, cars ripping around blind corners as if they're in Fast & Furious, all totally oblivious as to the danger they are potentially putting themselves and others in.

When Susan and I are out in the car, anywhere at all, it is simply astonishing how many examples of idiotic driving we'll witness on even the briefest of journeys.  Susan is a technically excellent, careful, observant and law-abiding driver, while all around us there are imbeciles.  It worries me to bits when Susan goes out on her own; it doesn't matter how good a driver she is with this many maniacs out there.  As we see all this stupidity we try to analyze it, talking through the various potential reasons bad driving is so rife here.  The fact that there is comparatively speaking so little traffic on the roads of Vancouver Island has made a lot of drivers lazy, we feel, and that seems about as plausible an explanation as any.

Whatever it is, two friends of mine are dead because of it.