Onlookers, usiseros, uzi

Everyday I commute to and from my office. And everyday I meet heavy traffic during the so-called rush hour as everyone and anyone rushes to get to their destinations at the same hour - 7:00am - to arrive at, well, 8:00am or earlier.

Heavy traffic is caused by several circumstances. First among them is, well, because there is a lot of traffic going on. :) too many cars, too small streets. And yes, that is the second cause, small streets and a large number of vehicles.

The more occasional cause is heavy rain. Slippery roads result in slower moving traffic.

Another reason can be surmised from the phrase "slippery road," accidents. Accidental contact between two vehicles results in blockage of the streets making the already small street much more constricted.

And accident as a cause of heavy traffic leads us to the next cause of traffic almost always linked road accidents - the onlookers or usiseros or 'uzis' as we call them in our country.

Onlookers of road accidents are curious drivers who slow down to see what happened in "ground zero." They start as irate drivers who hate heavy traffic because they are late. They then, upon passing the scene of the crime, turn to curious onlookers, replacing those before them, driving slower to get a good look at what happened keeping the slow pace of traffic that begins to extend further back. And they don't even care to stop and help. They just look.

These irate-drivers-turned-onlookers-who-don't-care-to-help will be replaced by more irate-drivers-turned-onlookers-who-don't-care-to-help until the cars who figured in an accident or collision are removed from the street thus continuing the cycle of that particular slow moving traffic.

So, the next time you pass by a road accident and you are one-who-don't-care-to-help, please don't even care to look and drive on and spare the rest of us the agony of becoming one of you.