Road trip social networking
by Jon Cherry on 23/01/08 at 12:33 pm
1 comment
South Africa is home to a rather unique form of outdoor social networking. You’re well aware of the custom, but perhaps don’t think about it too carefully, as the practice has now become second nature to travellers of our open roads.
Yes – the courteous, open road, yellow line pullover for the faster moving BMW driver behind you, which is usually [you better bloody well send me a sign buddy] thanked with a discrete flash of hazard light and acknowledged with a tip of the high lights.
There is in fact an entire national highspeed, light-enabled conversation constantly engaging hundreds of thousands of South African drivers at any one time on our roads, all without the help of any capitalist, corporate telecoms giant.
Imagine if you could channel this communication, or sell accessories to facilitate it…create a type of Facebook for the open road, the revenue potential would be vast.
Communication vehicles like the Plateflipper and the Drivemocion Fun Car LED [pictured here] are a positive start, but we’re now wondering why South African car distributers don’t include a ‘courtesy flasher’ [maybe also a hazard light, but one that flashes red] as part of their factory vehicle offering.
If the tradition of road trip social networking was big in Japan, they’d already have a ‘Hello Kitty flashing courtesy signal’ by now.
Jon Cherry is the founder of Cherryflava Media, a Trends & Innovation company. Jon is also the brains behind Cherryflava.com one of the most influential websites in Africa. Jon likes to pick out the business needles in South Africa's haystack. View more articles by Jon Cherry.
Barefoot Billionaire
Aug 7th, 2008
I’ve stopped using the hazard lights as a sign of gratitude after the button got stuck and I continued racing along the N1 into Cape Town looking like I’m about to go into labour. For about 50km. Now I just wave thank you, the old fashioned way – during daytime, of course.