By Petya Sabinova

Going to work today I stopped at a red light before a crosswalk and watched in dismay as a bus and several cars whizzed past me in the next lane, blissfully ignorant of the meaning of the colour red. Then I heard honking and after several seconds realized that the driver behind me, the same one who had spent the whole time on her phone, was now impatiently pressing her horn, urging me to move on. I looked at the light and it was still red. I turned back and showed her the traffic light and she showed me the finger in response. Now that really made me see red.

With an attitude like that, no wonder scores of people die in the "war on the roads" in Bulgaria every year. Just today reports came in of a man who rode his horse-pulled cart along the fastest highway lane at night with no lights whatsoever. Surprisingly enough a Jeep ran him over, killing him on the spot.

Now that the first day of school is coming drivers should probably reconsider looking back at the times they had to study all the rules to pass a theory exam and get their licence. Those rules have been invented for a reason, and this reason, believe it or not is not filling up the pockets of traffic policemen, but saving the lives of innocent people. People who are not wrapped up in speeding metal armour. People whose whole future may end right now for the sake of some driver getting somewhere seconds earlier. People who have no idea that "red reminds me of a baboon's ass, so I try to speed past it when I see it," as an acquaintance who thought himself quite witty once told me.

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