A friend of mine, sometime, somewhere, someone, told this story which had a huge impact on me then.

This guy had been to Germany, and was driving through a town somewhere near an Autobahn, and wanted to cross the road to get to a grocery store, presumably to grab a pepsi. There was a middle-aged woman with her son, who would have been 4 years old, and they were waiting at the pedestrian crossing. The Walk signal was red, and the road was empty for kilometres on either side, and this guy started crossing.

The woman called out and told him to wait for the signal before crossing, as he is setting a bad example for her son.

I heard this story a couple of years back, and went on to become duly impressed. Thinking back, i don't feel any sense of awe at her social responsibility.

Am losing my human traits one by one.

On a similar note, yesterday, I saw an auto-rickshaw driver with traffic sense. For a change, he did not honk, he did not bottleneck the perperndicular road, stopped before the yellow line at all traffic signals, and gave me back my 50 paise change.