To abandon your vehicle is to ask for trouble!

A news item in one of the dailies today has caught my eye. It is about the stringent traffic rules that have been drafted and which now await presidential approval to become law. One specific issue that I noted was that anyone abandoning a vehicle on the road would be hit with a stiff fine and/or jail sentence and have their driving licence suspended.

The article however does not however define what "abandoning" a vehicle means given that in Kenya we come across vehicles many times left by the side of the road or on the road either because they have suffered a mechanical breakdown, have run out of fuel, were involved in a minor/major accident, have had a puncture and had no spare tyre or the driver was too intoxicated/sick/tired to get home and decided to park by the road and get some sleep........or in extreme cases as happened a few months ago a motorist died while stuck in a traffic jam and no one is any the wiser! To cut a long story short and put things into perspective, www.dictionary.com defines abandon as; 1. to leave completely and finally; forsake utterly; desert: 2. to give up; discontinue; withdraw from:

Just this morning on my way to work, a truck had stopped/stalled at the Pangani underpass causing a tailback several metres long. "Was this an abandoned vehicle?" is a question that came to mind when I read the referenced article though there as a policeman strategically standing a few feet away animatedly conversing with an obviously agitated person, perhaps the driver of the offending truck. Vehicles are routinely abandoned for one reason or another on our roads, as I have mentioned earlier. Many of our roads contain no road shoulders and instead have dangerous, jagged edges which would de-commision a small tractor coming into contact with it therefore forcing many otherwise law abiding citizens to abandon their vehicles on the road as they jog off to the nearest petrol station with a "mtungi" to obtain fuel or summon a mechanic to enable them continue their journey.

Many people in Kenya own cars without the foggiest clue that regular servicing and maintenance of a vehicle is important to keep it running in a mechanically sound condition and to reduce the risk of stalling along a dangerous stretch of highway where people with other intentions other than your safety will rob you at panga/gun/simi point and steal your tyres to boot. This lack of service is one of the causes of many vehicles stalling and being abandoned, albeit temporarily, where they broke down as the desperate driver goes out to summon assistance from a mechanic or towing vehicle to get him out of his predicament.

Could a stalled vehicle therefore be considered an abandoned vehicle? How long would it need to be left in one place to be considered abandoned? If one is still in the vehicle when the long arm of the law catches up with you, is it still considered an abandoned vehicle? What about those instances where a vehicle is abandoned by fleeing gangsters that have commandeered another vehicle to make a quick getaway? Who is responsible for the abandonment of the vehicle? The owner of the vehicle or the gangsters????

If you ask me the law is surely an a$$ because within the new legislation there exists loopholes that any enterprising law enforcer can now use to extort from those that have 'abandoned' their vehicles. I am not sure if the full act defines what it means to abandon a vehicle or whether it will be left to a magistrate somewhere to deliver an interpretaion on what 'abandonment' constitutes, but you can bet there shall be a lot of very unhappy people who have been accused of abandoning their vehicles and therefore risk a large fine or jail sentence in the process!!

You have been warned. Acquaint yourself with the new stringent traffic laws lest you fall foul of them and find yourself facing a fine or jail sentence!!