Organised Chaos

It's been a week since I last had to brave traffic like that. 4 whole days of weaving in and out of motorcycles, running across roundabouts filled with moving vehicles, using white plastic bags at night to warn these vehicles that I'm crossing the road.

Then again, after you get the hang of it, it isn't that life-endangering or treacherous crossing the roads of HCMC. The vehicles, mainly made up of motorcycles, travel at 50km/hr, slow down when they are nearing a pedestrian and weave around him. Everybody's safe, happy and in one piece.

Now that I'm back, I wonder if that system's actually better than a super organised one. Like Kayestercan mentioned, Amsterdam, being a drug haven, has one of the lowest drug addiction rates.

Perhaps the theory is as such: the more you try to stifle and control something, the more people try to do it on the sly or illegally. We read of accidents happening ever so often, more often than not involving motorcyclists. Perhaps if we had fewer traffic rules and regulations, the accident and fatality rate might drop, no?