Driving

[cjsmith]

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 lrc notices way way way more than I do. Way more.

Comments

[lkeele.livejournal.com]

Small correction to #1: Any place where people *adjust their driving according to* lines painted on the road is a Rules environment. Cairo has some roads where lines are painted; so too, I understand, does Mexico City. It's just that those lines serve an entirely decorative purpose.

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.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I was glossing over the concept that in non-Rules environments, painted lines fade very quickly as everyone drives right over them. Sure, people paint lines in Cairo -- they just don't last long.

Much as I may sneer at California drivers nappers, 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?

[lkeele.livejournal.com]

They once barricaded off substantial portions of the Ring Road around Cairo in order to repaint lines. That was the biggest exercise in futility I've ever seen. But your point is well taken.

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.