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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.
no subject
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.