soggycherry

What do you consider a hazard? Roaches? Romance? Prams? Chillies?

I was recently studying for the hazard perception test which passing is required before I get my Ps (no judgement please). The test gives you a series of scenarios with potential road hazards to which I will have to respond.

It really is an impossible matter of prioritisation. What would you do if you are driving your toxic partner to work then encounter a mother traipsing on the side of the road with a pram? Ideally you would want to push your partner out of the car while protecting the family; practically it is not easy, he is obese and would certainly crush the scrawny lady and her precious. For my own safety it would be desirable that my partner is evicted from the car, and my life, as soon as the opportunity arises, in this case, when the car has reached far enough from home and when it was moving at an appropriately high speed. Regrettably this was also when we came across the mother and the newborn. I would have to deprioritise my safety if I were to push back my eviction plans to prioritise safety for the family. And in that case, the pram was a hazard to my safety too. What a cycle.

And what would you do if you see a roach scuttling right out from under your sneakers, all while you were trying to survive from ingestjng a thai chilli from the takeaway curry which your partner accidentally fed you? A roach in my fucking car? Gross! Hazardous! A partner who fed me chillies? Not a keeper! Hazardous! A chilli in my curry? Oh lord, where do I even start. I prefer my curry Japanese, that’s the most ethnic I can tolerate it, just saying. Hazardous! Back to where we were, how do I evaluate the risks? Each of them could easily destroy me. If I chose to spit out the chilli or, in the case it had already been swallowed, spew it out of my stomach, I would have to frantically look for a plastic bag or tissues and that would keep my eyes away from the road and any incoming hazards, as well as an existing one that is my partner who fed me chillies. If I decided to prioritise kicking my partner out of the car, I could lose my life to the spice, and katsaridaphobia, for no one would perform the necessary partner duty of exterminating the roach. Well, I guess as a superior solution, I could toss my partner out of the window with my legs or my arms and spit out the chilli at the same time; two hazards OBLITERATED. While being tossed, my partner may, as a result, hit the scurrying roach crawling by the window. The force with which he is slung out coupled with the weight he already carries could probably flatten it. Third hazard, OBLITERATED. Wow, a genius I always am.

Normal people couldn’t big brain like that. To be fair, I don’t always come up with perfect solutions either. That there is rarely a perfect approach, at least one I could think of at the fleeting monent the hazards appear, to responding to risks confuses me. I’m anxious about making decisions on the road. I’m terrified of wrongly prioritising putting down what I thought were imminent threats, but were actually not so bad after all, for in that case I’d be letting the other hazards in. Similarly I’m scared of underestimating the potential consequences of one hazard over others. What if there is actually a right answer which I had failed to appreciate … just like, when my mother told me to go to English tutoring but also make my bed and practice clarinet scales. I know the right thing to do would be to do everything, but god I couldn’t, and even I did I didn’t excel in any of those things. I barely completed all those tasks, and poorly so. But at least I finished them? Should I have prioritised performing each those tasks perfectly, or was I right to do just enough to get by all of them so my mother wouldn’t chew me out?

And just like when my partner made me pick between mummy issues and poor communication. God knows what was worse. The latter seems more remediable and the former more lasting, but still the former was probably a reason for the latter. It was really hard to prioritise, so the plan of giving him the boot was probably best. Even then I couldn’t foresee hence properly handle other hazards coming into the picture, the pram, the roach, the chilli, other partners …