The World's Most Unfortunate Fender Bender

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On Tuesday a Ghanaian man was sentenced to nine months in prison for failing to yield to a police motorcade and causing an accident. Nine months may sound excessive, but this guy didn't just hit any police motorcade, he hit the President of Ghana's motorcade, and in fact the very car the President was traveling in. Wow, talk about the wrong time to skirt Ghana's rarely-enforced traffic laws.

My favorite part of this is the statement from the government that "this sentence had nothing to do with whose car the man hit, and it should be a message to all drivers to obey traffic laws, and blah, blah, blah...."

I mean, c'mon. In just two and a half months I've seen more wreckless driving than in my entire 28 years on earth, and have never heard of anyone getting so much as a citation. I was in a taxi once that hit another taxi, and they both shrugged it off like nothing had happened. In fact, that same day I was being driven by a taxi through downtown Kumasi at rush-hour. The driver got fed up with the traffic, and decided to try and cut the line at the traffic light. So he swooped into the oncoming lane, positioned himself halfway into oncoming traffic as the cars rode up on the edge of the pavement to avoid him, stopped right there and waited for the green light, then raced in the opposite lane straight towards a car turning left from our original lane, beeping the horn for the man to turn quick or be hit, the other driver rushing out of our way. Once past the turning car, my taxi driver swerved the wheel fully to the right again to cut off two lanes of traffic from the original line of cars we had been at the end of just seconds before, all while rush-hour pedestrians walked by with briefcases, children, and baskets of goods on their heads. All of this happened with not even a moment of hesitation from surrounding cops, who went about their business of, well, I'm not sure what they were doing that meant they couldn't flag this guy down. So there is no way I'm buying that this man would be serving nine months if he had hit any other car in Ghana besides the President's. But then again, what if that happened in the US? Would we be taking the man to a military tribunal for attempted assasination? Would Bush seek the death penalty?

Of course, the man sent to jail was not too upset about the sentence, saying he was just glad to get the ordeal past him. This might be due to the fact that he will only serve nine more days in jail. Why nine days, not nine months? Because he's been sitting in jail since November awaiting trial, even though he was sent to Ghana's special fast-trial court system for quicker-than-normal processing, so he's basically already served most of the sentence. This was final confirmation that I am not going to rent a car for a trip I planned to make this weekend.

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