This morning found Mrs H and I tootling down our road having set off on a car trip to a local garden centre. At the junction with the main road into town, we had a very restricted view of traffic coming from the right due to parked cars. Many drivers approach the junction at excessive speed too, but we're used to coping with that.
About fifty yards down the road into town we had to slow right down for a car coming towards us on our side of the road. He'd been parked on our side of the road facing oncoming traffic but when driving off he had hopelessly misjudged his attempt to join the traffic flow away from town.
Coming back from the garden centre on the A38 we watched a queue of traffic build up in the right hand lane as one lorry spent ages trying to overtake another on the dual carriageway. Eventually he gave up but tried again on the next hill. We're used to seeing that though.
It's just an impression and maybe it's an aspect of old age, but driving standards don't seem to be improving.
6 comments:
Observation based on trips around the country suggests a sharp decline when people resumed driving after lockdown, perhaps part of a general shift in behaviour caused, in part, by prolonged and solipsistic isolation (see also people peering in through our front windows from the pavement; never a problem before lockdown, now so common we - and several friends in a like situation - have reluctantly installed permanent blinds.)
Macheath - I agree, there does seem to have been general shift in behaviour. We see other hints such as more litter and dog crap on pavements.
Maybe people peering through your front window indicates something else as well as bad manners, something a little infantile perhaps.
‘Infantile’ is a good description; some of our unwelcome spectators, peering in with a complete lack of embarrassment even when we look up and make eye contact, display all the unselfconscious curiosity of a toddler at the zoo.
I think the same phenomenon may be at play with the driving; as screens and technology replace human contact and social interaction (a process exacerbated by successive lockdowns), drivers are becoming far less aware of or concerned about other road users.
Macheath - that's an interesting thought, perhaps people are becoming unselfconscious and less attuned to the restraints of interpersonal feedback. Less attuned to the restraints of adulthood too perhaps.
Screens and technology are certainly part of it. My car has been off the road for a month awaiting parts, so the garage have provided a replacement: a newer model with too much technology. Have to press buttons to turn most of it off every time it starts, but there are still too many burps and bongs and little illuminated icons for whatever. No tactile feedback from dials and switches you can identify by feel alone. And a 'parking brake' under the dash on the right-hand side instead of a handbrake in the centre where nature intended. Designed by and for a generation immersed in screens and simulations.
djc - the technology puts me off even contemplating a new car. Having to switch it off every time it starts sounds tedious, if the car had a bit of machine intelligence it would remember.
People we know have told us about their cars interfering with steering or brakes because a false positive has been triggered in one of the 'driver assistance' systems. One got rid of the car because of that and bought a simpler one.
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