Slice of Life #3

London Traffic

       The cabs and buses go far too fast through the city of London. I don't remember it from when I went there earlier in my life, but it is nothing like I have seen before, and I'm not sure I will ever see it again in a different place. I've ridden in cabs a couple of times in my family's visit to one of the biggest cities in the world, and to be honest, I don't feel safe in them. It's as crowded with cabs and buses as New York City is, but both seemingly go twice as fast in London. It is sometimes entertaining and amusing, to be in one of the backwards-facing seats in a taxi and turn a corner, then, speed of to fifty mph just to go the length of a city block.

        The first day was quite surprising, because when my family and I got out of our apartment to go on a walk on Kensington High Street, we found that bus drivers while turning corners, constantly test both their skill and the functionality of of their vehicle as they swing around the city block hoping that a small dog doesn't run out onto the street at the last second.

         Seeing all of these tall, red, double-decker buses doing these things reminded me of one of the first scenes in the third Harry Potter. When I watched this I thought it was supposed to be a comic-magic bus that accelerated to extremely high speeds, but on this trip I found that they were probably making the scene modeled after true buses.

          At first I thought that there must loads of high-speed accidents in the city of London, but after thinking about it some more, I decided that it seemed to be a part of the culture here, and that everybody was used to the fact of impending danger as they crossed the cross-walks, but trust the other citizens to make the turn and stop turning at the exact right moment to make it a perfect blind-swinging maneuver. I do want to look up the rate of accidents in London versus those of which happen in NYC, because I get the feeling that for some odd reason they would be in the same neighborhood (pun).