Running over a reader

While riding my motorbike through Malaga, a newspaper reader crossed my path and I had to swerve to avoid him. Under other circumstances, I might have given him a hug, but on this occasion I was not in the mood. He jumped out like a deer, such was his haste to sit down peacefully and read the day's news in his printed edition of SUR, which he was carrying under his arm. It was no small feat: he had to cross no fewer than four lanes, two in each direction. As a good free thinker, he did so exactly where he wanted to, which was in the middle of the road, forcing all the cars, buses and motorbikes to stop. The pages of paper are the shield that protects the well-informed citizen from the hostilities of the system... A nice metaphor, but no editorial can save you from a nasty bump.

Running over a newspaper reader, one of the old guard, would have been a terrible accident. Firstly, because of the personal injury to him and to me, as I don't know how I could have escaped unscathed. And secondly, because we would have lost a loyal customer, one of those who goes to buy a newspaper every day, and we don't exactly have many of those nowadays...

Like this one, every day I get not one but several scares from reckless pedestrians. And so often does this happen that I prefer not to think about it. The mobile phone zombies, who cross the road staring at their screens as if they were strolling through the park, unperturbed, have now been joined by the absent-minded music lovers: kids with headphones covering half their faces who don't even notice when they're being honked at, just inches away from being hit by a lorry.

To make matters worse, now that we have to go to the new office in the city centre every day (we used to go there quite often before, but not as much), we encounter tourists, who quickly pick up the bad habits of the locals. Things that would never cross their minds in their home countries, they enjoy here, as if dodging cars and motorbikes in the middle of the road were a fun game.

Ask bus drivers, taxi drivers, delivery drivers and anyone who has to be on the move all day in Malaga: the lack of respect for the most basic road safety rules is getting out of hand.

It may be due to the increasing pedestrianisation, which means that spatial references are lost.

However, I believe it is more likely to be part of a general trend, in which respect for the basic rules of civic coexistence is becoming outdated.