| The Keys to Kiwi Driving In order to prepare
visitors for the exigencies of driving
automobiles along the thoroughfares of New
Zealand, it is necessary to explain three key
concepts of the ‘Kiwi’ driving system.
The locals may also find a use for this
information but I suspect it will be quickly
relegated to the same round filing system to
which the ‘Road Code’ was long since
despatched.
These three
concepts, which by no means deny that there are
written rules that are acknowledged, if not
adhered to, will illuminate the byways that you
travel.
They are: ‘Historic’,
‘Psychic’ and ‘Offensive
Social Responsibility’ Driving.
The first concept
is, by far, the easiest to explain. It is common
throughout the world and the basic idea is in no
way restricted to the traffic world. ‘Historic
Driving’ refers to the way that people
drive with the thought that the world should be
the way it was at some variable point in
it’s past.
How many times
have you heard someone say something along the
lines of:
"It used to
only take me 5 minutes to get to work!" or
"It was so much better before they put in
those traffic lights/pedestrian crossing/asylum
seekers etc, etc, etc"
Frustration
quickly appears due to ‘cognitive
dissonance’. That is; the world is very
rarely as it was or as we would like it to be.
The fact that it was never as good in the past as
we like to think. How many drivers would trade
their feats of electronic wizardry for cleaning
oil off the driveway every weekend, bump starting
their inanimate blocks of steel on wet mornings
and negotiating the ruts of the endless unsealed
roads of yesteryear.
New Zealand
currently suffers from a lack of traffic. This is
counter-intuitive, I know, but the concept of
SWOT (Sheer Weight of Traffic) is really some way
in the future. Yes, I know about Auckland. Yes, I
have been on the motorway at rush hour. But
I’ve also driven through the centre of
Auckland off the motorway at the ‘rush
hour’ and hardly dipped below 50kph.
Let’s not go mistaking bad motorway design
for something altogether more serious.
Any memory of how
quickly you could get from the North Shore to
Mangere probably relates to a brief period in the
70’s and 80’s. GET OVER IT!!!
So why do I say NZ
‘suffers’ from lack of traffic. Well,
because in countries where SWOT is really a
problem, they adopt survival strategies. One of
which is; courtesy. I know they’ve done the
experiment with rats. You know the one where, as
the population increases, they eventually stop
breeding. But I wonder if, after they’ve
beaten each other to a pulp over the available
food, partners and for the sheer hell of it,
whether for a small space of time before the
experiment is terminated that the rats learn a
little courtesy.
‘Oh, is that
your food? I thought it was mine. But please help
yourself. I wasn’t hungry anyway’.
I’ve lived in
a number of ‘high-density’ countries
where, when a vehicle is trying to get out from a
side road onto a main thoroughfare…. The
other drivers let them! Radical, I know. The
rationale is simple: It might be me tomorrow. The
drivers simply don’t use ‘Historic
Driving’ in this context. Yesterday it took
half an hour, today it’s going to take
longer and tomorrow… we’ll see.
While the first
concept is one that would best be overcome, the
second, ‘Psychic Driving’, is
one to aspire to. Within minutes of leaving the
rental company carpark at the airport, the
visitor will quickly see the advantages of
becoming adept at ‘Psychic Driving’.
That stick on the
side of the steering wheel. You know, the one you
never use. It’s a turn indicator. No,
listen. It’s really a neat idea. Apparently
when you want to turn a corner, change lanes,
execute U-turns in the middle of major
intersections…. You twiddle this stick and
the drivers around you get to anticipate your
actions.
Failing that, you
have to somehow intuit the actions of road users.
I have found my wife, as a foreign visitor, is
able to do this far more effectively than I. I
guess I’m still too hung up driving
‘historically’ to have time to figure
out what another driver might be thinking. But
she can pick up the subtle psychic signals that
mean the driver in front is about to stand on his
breaks and swerve violently to the right across
the oncoming traffic.
This ability
really comes into it’s own in two cases.
Motorways and intersections.
When travelling on
a motorway it is best to keep a ‘psychic
image’ of the traffic around as you amble
along at the excruciatingly stolid pace of
100kph. Subtle tremors in this mental image
indicate to those of advanced sensibility that a
car may be overtaking, undertaking, swerving
across three lanes to an exit, weaving gently as
the family inside discuss which take-away
provider gives the most efficient service and/or
biggest helping of chips, being chased by the
cops and/or gang members, occupied by a farmer in
hat who has left the farm in search of the
subsidised red fuel which has only now, finally,
been exhausted…. or all of these at one and
the same time.
Secondly at
intersections. Apparently, so interested were the
government in developing extrasensory perception
that they actually put the standard test for this
into the road code. The ‘Give Way’
rule.
All right, for
those visitors who have not yet got a copy of the
code and all Kiwi drivers who appear not to have
read it, here goes.
At an
intersection, if another car is coming from your
right… Give Way. Easy… right?
Bear with me
though. Let’s say you’re turning left
at this intersection. You still give way! At this
point you’re saying ‘What an idiot!
What’s his problem?’.
OK, OK. What if
he’s facing you across the intersection and
other cars are steaming up behind you.
Now I have to
figure out a decision tree like this. Are one or
several cars also going to turn left with me? Is
somebody going to go straight through? Does the
other car know that he has right of way? Does
anyone know what is going on?
In the absence of
turn indicators and, more often than not, in
spite of them, the good ‘Psychic
Driver’ is able to fathom the intentions of
all participants in this party then reach a
decision that holds only the normal risk of
instantly morphing into a can of Watties Baked
Beans.
The last concept I
believe, is New Zealand’s unique gift.
‘Offensive Social Responsibility Driving’.
A little long and obtuse I grant you, but I felt
it deserved a title of sufficient mana.
‘Offensive’
does not mean in the sense that it holds up two
fingers and indicates without subtlety what you
can do with your free time. No, I mean,
‘offensive’ in the same, but opposite,
way that we talk about ‘Defensive
Driving’. Offensive doesn’t mean we sit
back and take it but that we give it out with
gusto.
‘Social
Responsibility’ should mean things like
picking up your litter, teaching your kids not to
swear at their teachers, voting for the
uninspiring but uncontroversial community
leaders, teaching your kids not to take P in the
bathrooms and beat up their teachers, driving
with due care and consideration for others! You
know, the old values.
Combined with the
term ‘Offensive’, ‘Social
Responsibility’ goes on the road and kicks
ass.
Now we have folks,
those of ‘that certain age’ or the ones
with window stickers saying things like ‘My
other car’s a bicycle’, who take it
into their own hands to get the traffic under
control. Not just any control… but their
control.
The ones who
insist of driving at 10 or 20 kilometres per hour
below the speed limit. Those that drive along the
middle line to stop anyone overtaking.
My favourite
example of this behaviour occurred at a new
roundabout in a major town in the Kiwi
hinterland. There was a nice straight road which
required a side road to be grafted on
successfully to allow supermarket traffic et al
to join the stream. For the purposes of this
explanation the side road is superfluous although
without it, even a road engineer would have a
hard job justifying the roundabout.
Somebody got it
into their heads that if you were driving
straight through the roundabout, you should still
be indicating with the right signal as you make
your approach. Now there are three things to
note. Firstly, this only affects a minority of
drivers as for the most part, as previously
stated’ the turn indicator is a mystery.
Secondly, the ‘Road Code’ hasn’t
made a huge impact on the best-seller list.
Thirdly, it would be enshrined in our
constitution (if we had one), that once having
passed the driving test, the book should never
have to be opened again.
Quote: ‘If
you are going ‘straight’ through a
roundabout…. DON’T SIGNAL AS YOU COME
UP TO THE ROUNDABOUT’. Why? Because it
screws up the traffic which is coming the other
way and who has to wait while you make up your
mind what you’re doing!
Now this example
sounds like it belongs more to the previous two
concepts: Historic or Psychic Driving’. And
truth to tell, they play their part. But the
story continues:
Not only were
these drivers making others suffer during their
own use of the roundabout, they started standing
around taking number plates of cars who were not
doing likewise. With luck they were arrested for
wasting police time when they attempted to
‘dob’ in these vehicular malfeasants.
But I hold no real
hope of this as the police too play a part in
‘Offensive Social Responsibility
Driving’. And logically this should be so.
Officers of the Law are expected to uphold a code
of conduct decided by the community in which they
live. Things like: Thou shalt not kill, steal or
drive at more than 100 kph on an empty, straight
piece of motorway. What about adultery?
Because it’s
a social code… not meant to be a moral code.
I just want to
know one thing. What is the police ‘mission
statement’ for traffic control? Now I would
hope that it was something like:
"To ensure
the efficient and safe use of the roads for all
users". Not catchy but says it all.
‘Efficient’ and ‘safe’ are
tradeoffs. You can’t expect to be 100% safe
while allowing every road user to get to work on
time, every foodstuff to arrive at it’s
destination at its peak, every product to get to
its embarkation port before the customer changes
their minds. There’s going to be some broken
eggs, widgets and yes, heads.
I think the police
decision process goes something like this:
‘If we halve the accidents by going half the
speed, then going at no speed will mean…
er… no accidents?’. Yep, right! And no
economy, cities or let’s face it,
inhabitants. We’ll all be off to some other
country where the speed cameras are at the race
track where they belong.
So what can we do
with our knowledge of these three driving
concepts.
Let’s stop
living in the past. ‘Hurrah… it took me
40 minutes to get to Mangere this morning. I got
to listen to a whole morning talk show’.
Tell your children how long it used to take to
drive somewhere. It’s a great soporific.
Next time you
drive somewhere with your partner, play the game
‘What Happens Next’. Develop your
psychic ability and have fun while you’re
doing it. If all else fails, the CIA used to hire
those with a good showing of ESP. Once through
the ‘Give Way’ rule with your local
agent will ensure your selection.
Let’s get
back to living a good and moral life ourselves
and, by our example, bring others back to the
fold. You can lead a horse to water but you
can’t make it drive at 80kph on the open
road by annoying the bejeebers out of it.
Bruce
20th February 2004
2024 Words
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