Today, as I am driving to work there is another accident.  I crossed the lights and found myself in a traffic queue which, unfortunately meant that I was blocking the traffic traversing the road I was on.  So, in order to avoid the blaring of horns by cars that would come right up to my drivers door, and because I am driving more and more like a Milanese, I turned my car to the right and pulled up alongside the car that had been immediately in front of me (who, incidentally, was also blocking some of the traffic from the right).  So now he wasn’t blocking any traffic, it was only me.

Still, surprisingly, no horns.  Unusually for Milan, the cars were patient.  They waited until they could pull out into the “faster” lane on their left.  We inched forward.  I knew it was an accident.  It was obviously an accident.  There I am, heading out of Milan, against the flow of traffic, which normally moves at an incredible speed compare to those poor mugs who try to get into Milan every morning.  Sitting in the queues.  Suffocating from the fumes in front and, themselves, suffocating the people in the car behind, or the poor sucker who bikes.

And then I see an ambulance, blue flashes and sirens wailing, heading against my traffic, towards Milan.  So, someone was hurt.  Maybe a pedestrian?  No, of course not I knew the answer already.  Then, suddenly, we are moving forward, more slowly than usual, but faster than stopped, as we were a few minutes ago.  And then, within seconds, I reach the scene although now there is no real scene.  Two police cars and two policemen picking up and standing up a motorbike.  One sitting in the other car and one just about to get in with a clipboard which certainly held the accounts of those involved, except, maybe the guy or girl in the ambulance?

Just as I suspected.  I could see no other cars that had been involved, but as I drove over the place where the body had lain, I noticed the markings, made by the police.  Like some pop art in the middle of the road.  Ah yes, in the middle.  Another of the myriad, omnipotent, invincible motorcycle riders had, by bad luck or stupidity, or probably both, become less omnipotent and more human.

I shook my head.  The sadness of that but the stupidity of the invincibles!  And then, less than a mile further on I am rounding a long but quite sharp curve in the road.

The opposing traffic is still stopped this far back, but there are two of the omnipotents sitting astride their highly powerful machines and racing around, overtaking the row of cars, directly in my line.  And I shook my head again.  Will they even think about it when they arrive where the accident was?  Probably not as there will nothing but the policemen’s art there then, and they won’t even notice the still, slightly crumpled machine on the edge of the road or the new art installation as they drive over it.