|
©
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
Mailnotes
Next week
Previous
Top
|
Back on the subject of driving. I am not blameless myself, and there was
an incident this morning which had me mildly berating myself for being careless.
This was on a longish stretch with divider and two lanes in either direction.
There are lights every few blocks or so, but inbetween, traffic flows tolerably
well and usually quite fast (limit +10 km/h or so), confident in right-of-way.
Pre-dawn and foggy, the streetlights have just gone out, so it is still sort
of dark grey everywhere. Despite being tired, I try to stay alert, because
these roads see a lot of unlit cyclists in unexpected places.
Several hundred meters ahead I notice a car in the right lane, brake lights
on, apparently stationary. I'm in the left lane, but ease up on the gas pedal
slightly.
I have seen drivers stop to let off people in places like that, or even get
out themselves. Never does my peace of mind any good when a driver's side
door flies open a few car-lengths ahead. It is an unfortunate custom here
that many of these two lane stretches periodically allow parking in the right
lane during certain hours. Drivers tend to take that right for granted at
any point along the street, at any time -- often at locations and times most
inconvenient.
By the time I'm almost there, nothing has happened and the car is still just
standing there. But then suddenly two cyclists zoom out, crossing the street,
heads right to watch for traffic on the other side of the
divide. There's a panic touch of brakes on my part, but I quickly assess
that I'm far enough away (several car lengths) that, even as they
slow crossing my lane, I still have margin to have them clear the
lane. They do, and I continue rolling, at perhaps 30 km/h. As luck would
have it, just as I pass the car on the right, still stopped, another
cyclist turns up in front of it! Luckily at a very slow pace, so the danger
is not critical, but still... <blooper buzzer
sounds>
Ok -- my error was to assume I could pass the stationary car, just
like 99% of the other drivers do in the same situation, because of the
expectation that it was stopped for its own reasons, not for any crossing
cyclists. Having once seen the cyclists, I should not have "cut corners",
but come to a full standstill (heedless of any irate drivers behind
me) and notwithstanding the formal right-of-way. Of course, this turned out
to be a pedestrian crossing (half hidden zebra stripes), which totally negates
the RoW principle, but that wasn't obvious in the approach.
The recent law here on this issue now states, somewhat inanely, that drivers
must stop at pedestrian crossings if pedestrians are "near" the
crossing. Used to be that an "intent to cross" had to be demonstrated. End
result, drivers still blithely ignore pedestrians, who in turn blithely assume
cars will always stop. Except for that one driver in a hundred who totally
confounds everyone by actually following the letter of the law.
As an aside here, I will just mention that the last few years we lived in
Gothenburg, we could always identify the out-of-town drivers, because they
invariably stopped when the lights shifted from yellow to red. Local custom
had become that 2-5 cars would run the red, at speed. Most common accident
in town was therefore a local car hitting an out-of-town driver from behind
(sometimes a chain).
Isabel once there experienced being rammed in the right rear for much the
same reason. She had turned left at a just-turned green light on a ramp and
overpass crossing, when this other car comes from the opposite up ramp at
a tremendous clip, thinking to run the just turned-red on his side (he admitted
as much). Our car was spun 180 and written off, but she didn't have a scratch,
evidently sitting at the center of rotation.
Malmö isn't quit that bad yet... only 1-3 cars , and only half the time,
try the run-the-red trick, much to the annoyance of left-turning traffic
in the crossings.
(There are a couple of comments about this in mail.)
|
See the
update-link (above) that points to the start of
where I last added some text, which should simplify your keeping up to speed.
Of course, you'll still have to scroll back a bit and see if I've updated
more than once since you last visited, but that should be a minimal bother.
.