Mad Max

Generally, I've tried to avoid posting about other blogs and user generated content on the Internet because I fear that it just helps towards the creation of the written equivalent of a Dyson Sphere where all blogs become comments on other blogs. Still, every now and again something comes along that is so brilliant it demands a mention even at the risk it's already been seen, so here is the video guide to staying safe as a pedestrian in Korea. While it may seem like a rather amusing aside, having lived in Korea for six months I see it as a rather biting satire since it has an alarming element of truth running through it. I say this influenced by a car missing my foot by inches on one of those wide Korean crossings the other day when the pedestrian light was green because the driver, having come out of a side road almost adjacent to the crossing, evidently felt that since he was already beyond the actual red traffic light, it didn't apply to him and he could therefore drive through the crossing area - and the people on it - at a 45 degree angle until he got to his preferred lane and sped off into the distance. Just because he was driving relatively slowly doesn't make it much less disconcerting when a car suddenly appears from behind you on a crossing.

Motorcycles of course, are even worse, and have free run of the road, the pavement (sidewalk), crossings and generally anywhere there's an open space. I'm waiting for the day one drives through my apartment building because of some perceived short-cut or convenience. And there's a good chance that said motorbike will have a large take-away box protruding from both sides, or potentially more alarmingly, an LPG canister strapped precariously to the back, because for reasons that still elude me, accident-prone motorcycles are seen as the preferred method of delivering potentially volatile LPG canisters to customers in Busan. And if it's not gas cylinders being carried on the back of a bike, often the challenge is to see just how much you can balance behind you on a small motorbike without defying the laws of gravity.



You might think that the fact that ninety-percent of bike riders here don't wear helmets of any kind would make them more cautious and therefore the whole affair safer, but based on my increasingly extensive observations I have to say otherwise. Pictures I wish I'd taken - a guy on a scooter the other day doing about 40mph (sans helmet of course) weaving in and out of slower traffic, all while using one hand to chat on his mobile phone - and the four people on one scooter seen heading towards the local university one afternoon which I'd have believed it impossible if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes.

Conversely, or perhaps because Korean drivers take red lights as merely an advisory rather than a hard rule, I've seen - and yes stood with - pedestrians at small crossings (occasionally people break ranks) where there have been no cars but because the light was read everyone waited patiently, perhaps for two minutes. Because, you never know where the next Korean killer car or motorcycle is going to appear from.