When I go through clients’ files it always leaves me with a sense of horror of driving on the roads in South Africa.  So many of my clients have had accidents in the most bizarre circumstances.  Driving along a road and another car, travelling in the opposite direction, separated by then from an island takes off, goes through the air upside down, crashes into their car before killing everyone in the car, but for my client.  

Another example is clients who are driving along a road where a trailer disconnects from a vehicle and suddenly comes veering towards them.  Hearing all these stories ends up making one very nervous when driving on the roads in South Africa and as I say in my one TV advert, we all focus too much on crime when you have just as much of a chance of dying in a motor accident in South Africa as you do from crime.  In fact, depending on the area where you live, you probably have a higher chance of dying from a motor accident, given that there are a higher number of deaths from crimes happening in townships, so if you are not living in a township dying in a motor accident is probably your biggest risk other the diseases of older age- heat disease, cancer etc.   

It also reminds me of the situation my family and I have been in.  My wife told me how my niece delayed her at gym just outside Broadacres and when she was running behind time, a trailer disconnected from a vehicle and had been spinning around.  She always wonders what would have happened to her if my niece had not been delaying her in gym.  There are so many near escapes – my own brother who was in an accident where some of the passengers sitting alongside him were put in homes for the rest of their lives due to the catastrophic brain damage they suffered.  As a young University student I was a passenger in a vehicle on Sixth Street, Parkhurst where I think the driver must have skidded the car for 50 metres as he went round an intersection with 4^th Avenue and probably drove through a red robot as well, but I cannot remember now.  As you get older and depending on how much you went out when you were young, there are so many situations and scenarios that you can think back on which might well have ended very differently and tragically.  Sometimes it is your friends – or my brother David’s friend that drove off with his car, drove through a wall and was also been institutionalised for the rest of his life.