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Driving
A friend posted some travel impressions a few days back, and I am reminded of one of my own, about driving. My travels have given me the theory that there are two distinct and mostly disjoint sets of driving skills. These are:
1) Always Drive by the Official Written Rules, and If Everyone Else Does Too, then Thou Shalt Survive: the United Sates and western Europe and the like. Any place with painted lane lines is a major Rules environment.
2) Look Around, Plan Ahead, and Do Not Blink, and Thou Shalt Survive: Cairo, for example, and cities in China, and I'm guessing India as well.
My experience so far is that people are good at one or the other of these things. Many Rules people will strongly castigate the Look group for being "bad" drivers or "unsafe" drivers, because the Look folks lack the only skillset a Rules person can imagine is important. Some Rules folks will start an argument over this paragraph alone. The certainty that there is One True Way runs deep. Conversely, I would not be hugely surprised to find Look folks thinking Rules drivers are frighteningly unsafe.
By the pitiful standards of Rules countries, I seem to be high on the noticing axis. I "see into the future" by looking around. The more you notice, the more you can predict. Very often, when I'm a passenger with a friend driving, I see something develop... I imagine what I might do in response... then I see something else develop... then I see a couple other potential good moves... and my driver glances in the direction of the first something and flinches. I probably saved my left side from some messy injuries by seeing this begin to happen early enough that I could slow a lot and move over a lot before I got hit. So I do notice stuff. Essentially, though, I know I'm a daughter of a Rules environment.
I'm remembering a cab ride in Cairo wherein I noticed a situation developing -- a bus starting a U-turn or something like that -- maybe a quarter mile down the street past a writhing teeming sea of other vehicles and pedestrians. Hard on the heels of my noticing that, I saw that my cab driver was moving in what was obviously a good tactical response. That meant he had noticed the situation itself before I did. I have never in my LIFE ridden with any other driver who I could tell, just by watching what he did, had noticed something before I did. I was big time impressed.* I know he probably wouldn't do well if he were suddenly dropped in Sunnyvale, but I knew darn well he had me outclassed in Ma'adi.
I had the piece of paper legally allowing me to drive in Cairo, but I didn't do it. I won't drive in any place where the system is Look Around until I get a heck of a lot better at Look Around. But at least I've figured out not to try to use Rules.
*Note: I bet a dollar![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lrc notices way way way more than I do. Way more.
1) Always Drive by the Official Written Rules, and If Everyone Else Does Too, then Thou Shalt Survive: the United Sates and western Europe and the like. Any place with painted lane lines is a major Rules environment.
2) Look Around, Plan Ahead, and Do Not Blink, and Thou Shalt Survive: Cairo, for example, and cities in China, and I'm guessing India as well.
My experience so far is that people are good at one or the other of these things. Many Rules people will strongly castigate the Look group for being "bad" drivers or "unsafe" drivers, because the Look folks lack the only skillset a Rules person can imagine is important. Some Rules folks will start an argument over this paragraph alone. The certainty that there is One True Way runs deep. Conversely, I would not be hugely surprised to find Look folks thinking Rules drivers are frighteningly unsafe.
By the pitiful standards of Rules countries, I seem to be high on the noticing axis. I "see into the future" by looking around. The more you notice, the more you can predict. Very often, when I'm a passenger with a friend driving, I see something develop... I imagine what I might do in response... then I see something else develop... then I see a couple other potential good moves... and my driver glances in the direction of the first something and flinches. I probably saved my left side from some messy injuries by seeing this begin to happen early enough that I could slow a lot and move over a lot before I got hit. So I do notice stuff. Essentially, though, I know I'm a daughter of a Rules environment.
I'm remembering a cab ride in Cairo wherein I noticed a situation developing -- a bus starting a U-turn or something like that -- maybe a quarter mile down the street past a writhing teeming sea of other vehicles and pedestrians. Hard on the heels of my noticing that, I saw that my cab driver was moving in what was obviously a good tactical response. That meant he had noticed the situation itself before I did. I have never in my LIFE ridden with any other driver who I could tell, just by watching what he did, had noticed something before I did. I was big time impressed.* I know he probably wouldn't do well if he were suddenly dropped in Sunnyvale, but I knew darn well he had me outclassed in Ma'adi.
I had the piece of paper legally allowing me to drive in Cairo, but I didn't do it. I won't drive in any place where the system is Look Around until I get a heck of a lot better at Look Around. But at least I've figured out not to try to use Rules.
*Note: I bet a dollar
lrc notices way way way more than I do. Way more.
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I did finally get the hang of crossing the street in Cairo. There's a rhythm to it, a feel, and when the moment is right, you wade in. Don't change speed or direction rapidly and it'll all come out okay. Of course, the drivers are doing a good part of the work to make that happen. What an experience.
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The Look places intimidate me too. Much as I pride myself on noticing things around me, I know I have no business calling myself a competent Look driver.
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Driving on racetracks is an interesting example of "rules" and "look".
It's my experience that most American drivers will look ahead about 200' or to the rear bumper of the car ahead of them. Whichever is less.
There was a thread in Mr. Roadshow recently:
http://www.mercurynews.com/mrroadshow/ci_6850246
http://www.mercurynews.com/mrroadshow/ci_6859694
about an accident caused by someone trying to rescue his wife in her broken down car. He changed lanes without signalling causing one person to swerve and almost hit someone else, who hit the barrier.
There were all sorts of suggestions made, but one that I noted was severely lacking was that if the other drivers had been paying attention, the accident could have been avoided. But, nobody noted that Mr. Nguyen was driving like he was looking for someone and likely to do something stupid.
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Yes, I am the person who signals a left turn while in the outside left turn lane, thus causing drivers in the inside left turn lane to worry that I intend to barge into their lane when I make the turn.
I am also the driver that never turns left across El Camino Real into the Walgreen's/Smart and Final lot near Grant/237 -- there is no rule that tells me yes, it's safe or no, it's not safe. In such conditions, the rules shrug and say go when it's safe.
I proceed to the signal and make the U.
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(and yeah, I too am sufficiently Rules-indoctrinated that I signal a turn when in the outside turn lane.)
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(*)Driving While Oriental
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Heading north on El Camino Real and making a right turn into the Rite-Aid parking lot (next to Safeway) is definitely a Look situation. More often than not, I have to perform avoidance maneuvers when people in the center left-hand-turn lane try U-turning or left-turning when they don't have the right of way.
Randy occasionally goes "mmmm..." at me when I'm driving, but he has a lot more faith in other drivers' knowledge of and willingness to adhere to the Califonia Motor Vehicle Code than I do.
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When someone breaks the Rules, Looking can often avoid an accident. Yet in a Rules land, drivers who are paying no attention at all to anything but themselves -- while following the Rules -- are usually considered perfectly safe, even admirable drivers. To me, these two statements do not go well together.
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Interestingly, Santiago, Chile is a "look" culture for drivers, but a "rules" culture for pedestrians. In Chile, motor vehicles always have the right of way over pedestrians on a roadway. When the light turns green, the pedestrians scatter.
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Boston rotaries, say. ;-)
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Layered to the nth degree, freeways had speeds of 150 mph or so, with 8 lanes of traffic going your way. The 'rules' were that you merged from the fast lanes to the slower lanes to exit the freeway onto terrestrial roads. The roads were actually like people movers, with graduated speeds.
Daily, and often hourly, there were cataclysmic accidents with cars flying off the freeways at high rates of speeds, and an entire industry had formed around the cleanup of accidents.
What a vision of the future!
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Maybe that's just from driving in Boston; the Rules seem to mostly be a staring point relative to which people cheat. But it goes the other way too; some pointlessly friendly driver yielded to me at the BU bridge rotary a few weeks back... from the inner orbit of a two lane rotary, when I was coming in from Mem Drive, and there wasn't anything I could do but hope the driver figured it out before being overtaken by other traffic :-}
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Even smaller correction to #2: Thou Shalt Probably Survive. Important qualification.
However, I otherwise agree completely with your distinction and your analysis. :) May I be so bold as to add a #3?
Non-Rules, Non-Looking driving environment. This is a habit of driving common to those who rarely encounter any other creature on the road except for an occasional sheep, camel, or armadillo. This is how non-Cairene Egyptians drive, and even the Cairenes when they're out in the desert. This is how the Natchitochians drive, even when they're actually in our little city with its painted lines and its occasional stupid pedestrian (i.e. me). These are people very used to driving however they want, in whatever lane, at whatever speed, without paying the slightest attention to other creaters, and often not bothering to use headlights at night, because why would you bother when there's nothing to see?
The difficulty comes when there actually *is* another vehicle on your lonely road, and then you run into it (as happens in the deserts of Cairo at least once a week, if not much more frequently) -- or when you're foolhardy enough to go into an environment like #1 or #2, because you're not used to following rules and not at all used to paying attention to anything outside of your own car.
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Much as I may sneer at California
driversnappers, I don't think I've ever been in a #3 environment (with the possible exception of cab rides in southern Egypt at night). Do Natchitochians completely ignore the lane lines and the lights and the sidewalks and stuff?no subject
To be honest, only a subset of Natchitochians drive like #3 is their home, and I suspect it's because they *are* farmers, and used to driving around mainly on their own farm and between farms. Our little town, with it's Walmart, is a big shopping place for the folks who live in the rural bits around our town. And they do mostly ignore the lines, always ignore the speed limits (though whether they drive 40 miles over or under the posted limit seems to depend on their mood), and never look out for bicyclists, pedestrians, children, or pets. If they notice one of the above, their faces register complete shock, but their driving usually doesn't change.
They do pay some attention to the lights, but they actually treat the lights as suggestions rather than rules, and run reds whenever they feel like it. They may slow down before running the red (this is how I know they pay some attention), or they may not.
They don't ignore the sidewalks, because (1) there aren't very many, and (2) the ones that there are are usually accompanied by cliff-sized curbs, or deep and wide ditches, and thus getting the car onto the sidewalk would take an Evel Knievel-worthy stunt.
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When I've driven in the Los Angeles area, I've often been surprised by the major intersections where there's no separate signal for the left turn lanes. It makes a big difference in driving styles. L.A. drivers have to be able to gauge the gaps in traffic in order to turn left, but the oncoming traffic will also stop for a yellow light, because they're expecting left-turning cars to clear the intersection. I think it makes for better drivers (or at least more Look-ish drivers).
On the other hand, I knew it was a doomed cause when I accidentally turned left in front oncoming traffic in San Francisco (at Portola and O'Shaughnessy), because I was expecting a green arrow to come first in the cycle. I think of myself as a fairly good driver (I pay attention to traffic ahead, etc.), so it was quite disturbing to me. My next time at that intersection, a turn-arrow signal had been installed, so I guess I wasn't the only one. Now there are 2 left turn lanes, which is less feasible without a green arrow.
Here at Stanford, there are a lot of 4-way stop signs. A lot of people seem to expect the left turns to go first, like the typical phases of a traffic signal with left-turn arrows. Other people want to yield to the oncoming traffic. Add in the bikes, pedestrians, and joggers, all moving at different speeds, and it can be a harrowing experience.