Smoky Cogs

I follow the tweets of @RyanOConnorSA, who is a breakfast show DJ on KFM, a radio station in Cape Town. Well, he retweeted a story posted on www.overdrivetv.co.za. The tweet rang a bell of an incident which happened to me several months ago, so checking out the link, I was most surprised to find that the incident was the exact same incident which I was witness to.

It all began on a blisteringly hot summers day in Johannesburg, in mid-December 2008. I was up there for the day, for a business meeting with some clients for a software project, and so, Mark, my boss at the time (who is also a good friend), his wife, another colleague, Greg, and myself left his house, which serves as his office, and drove up to Sandton for the meeting in two cars. Mark and his wife in one, and myself and Greg in the other.

We each went different routes, and a few block from our destination we got a phone call from Mark saying that he had been in an accident, and within a few minutes arrived on the scene.

It seemed like chaos there. A top of the range Aston Martin DBS had crashed into Mark and in wife in their Chevy Spark, and 5 other cars while they were waiting a red traffic light coming off the M1 highway.

There was loose gravel on the road, and the Aston Martin was coming too fast and skidded.

The real twist in the tale is that the Aston Martin was out on a test drive. Someone’s insurance was going to be rather peeved about this little accident.

Fortunately no-one was seriously injured in the accident, although things could have certainly been worse. The back seat of Mark’s Chevy Spark was quite compacted, and before we left I toyed with the idea of driving with them. If I had I would have been sitting on that compacted back seat.