Someone I met with last month, at a local café, suggested it should be part of our school curriculum to teach students about road safety and driving. (I am told one of Rwanda’s top tweeters used to make a similar proposal but people did not give it enough thought.) With twenty-seventeen almost coming to an end, I was only compelled to hear these sorts of ideas pop up during a casual conversation. This is certainly a good time to think differently about certain issues.

The point, though, is that everyone deserves to be taught how road traffic and its rules work, where and how they apply, and why they matter. Not just simply because we all of us use public roads, but also because the more people know, say, how to drive vehicles, the better off we would be.

But why is it that so many Rwandans fail the driving tests? Is it because they are bad at learning to operate the complexity of an automobile? Or it is because the road traffic authority makes it hard, by default, for people to obtain permits? Perhaps, also, the driving schools – that we can now see almost in every corner of the city – are not good enough? Too many questions.

Whatever it is, it extremely baffles me to see fellow citizens upset over failing a driving test. By now, driving a car should be added to the list of things we, as a society, do not want to make our problems. Because, frankly, if this is a problem, what shall we make of the actual headache of explaining to ourselves how an engine works or, for example, how to make cars?

I was thinking – the other day – if an alien being, of higher intelligence, came to us and learned of how the Rwanda police traffic department gives people a hard time with the driving permit tests, they would certainly be disappointed in the human species of this part of the world.

Just a thought.

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