Husband Defies Odds, Reaches Destination Without Wife Warning Him About Taxis

JOHANNESBURG — A Johannesburg husband has stunned road safety experts by driving through peak-hour traffic without his wife in the passenger seat warning him about taxis, oncoming cars, pedestrians and other hazards he had apparently failed to notice.

The man, thought to be in his early fifties, covered 14 kilometres without a single verbal warning, sharp intake of breath or urgent instruction to brake.

Along the way he negotiated three intersections, two taxi ranks, several potholes and a minibus taxi doing an illegal U-turn, all without anyone shouting, “Watch that taxi!” or “Did you see that guy?”

“I don’t know how I managed,” he said afterwards. “At one point a taxi pulled out right in front of me, and somehow I noticed it all by myself. It was extraordinary.”

His wife, who was not in the car, was alarmed to hear he had made such a dangerous trip unsupervised.

“He’s a good driver, but he doesn’t always see things,” she said. “Sometimes I have to tell him the car in front is braking. Or that the robot is red. Or that he’s too close to the pavement. I honestly don’t know what would happen if I wasn’t there.”

Told that her husband had been driving for more than 30 years, she said this only showed how lucky he’d been to have her for most of them.

Road safety researchers say the case challenges decades of thinking about the role wives play in spotting dangers already plainly visible through the windscreen.

“Until now, we assumed men were physically incapable of seeing a minibus taxi unless a woman pointed at it and shouted, ‘Careful!’” said one researcher. “This suggests husbands may have some limited independent hazard detection.”

Researchers were also impressed that he parked without being told he was too close to the car behind, despite having a working rear-view mirror and parking sensors.

The Automobile Association cautioned against reading too much into a single incident.

“One successful trip doesn’t mean husbands should start driving around unsupervised,” a spokesperson said. “We still strongly recommend someone in the passenger seat to gasp whenever a vehicle approaches from the left.”

At the time of publication, his wife was still asking whether he had locked the car.