Oops....first demerits

Poor Niqi....of all of us, she is probably the best driver and yet her confidence took quite a knock when she failed her drivers licence twice before finally passing.  Now she has it though, and it's been more than a year that she has been driving the highways and bi-ways of Pretoria, she drives with more confidence every day.

We have a family joke that if anyone is going to be pulled over by the traffic police, then it will be me....and it started many years ago.  I still had the piece of paper to say I had passed my licence, but was waiting for the permanent one to arrive, when I was pulled over for the first time.  Since then it has happened fairly regularly.  Johan reckons it is because I drive too carefully and keep too big a following distance, that they have time to jump in the road after the vehicle ahead of me and signal  me over.  Never because of an infringement, but because they are doing spot checks...sometimes and most times to check for licences, but otherwise to walk around the vehicle looking at everything and finally send me on my way.

Finally, someone else has been pulled over...NiQi and it was to a spot check of the hooter of the bakkie, because that is what she was driving....OOPS and OOPS again, try as she might the hooter would not work. Temperamental we knew it was, but why oh why did it decide that it didn't want to honk it's horn at that very moment.

Ticket time and her first de-merit...she was most upset when she arrived home and told us.  Now she is avoiding routes where she knows the traffic police sit regularly until we have a new hooter.   Amazing, but three places visited and none of them had it...it has been ordered.