I've thought of another manoeuvre that seems to have changed since I was taught to drive.
Imagine you are at a crossroads (literal, not figurative). You are turning right. Someone coming in the opposite direction is also turning to their right. When I learnt to drive, the correct thing to do was to wait in the middle of the junction, with the other car parallel on your right hand side, and then go round the back of each other when there was a gap in the oncoming traffic, or when the lights changed. Hard to describe, but if you imagine the two cars to be like dogs, sniffing each other's bottoms, you'll get the picture.
Now, a lot of junctions have arrows and lane markings, indicating that you shouldn't go round the back of the oncoming vehicle, but pass in front of them. But if there aren't any arrows and markings, what's the rule? It seems to be that you go in front, and usually you have to, because the volume of traffic means that it's not just one car turning right in each direction, but a whole string of them. But has the rule changed, or just practice?
Meanwhile, I was browsing through the book I used to keep of conversations with the kids that I wanted to remember, and I found some words on the subject of driving from my daughter, when she was 4.
"When I'm an adult, you'll have to help me to drive. Then when I've got good at it, I can move away and live in my own house and get married. And then I can teach the person I married to drive too. Is that what you did when you got married?"
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I'm pretty certain the Highway Code wants you to drive round the front of each other.
ReplyDeleteCan't say it's always done in practice though...
I know when I did my test you had to go round the back of each other as you say, but in practice this wasn't always possible. It seems far more sensible to cross in front of each other.
ReplyDeleteI was taught to go round the back, but the very first time I tried to do it I got beeped at. Another instructor I met socially a couple of days later said you have to use your common sense and it's often down to the size of the junction.
ReplyDeleteI think I would still go round the back. But I would probably be all confused now because I'm used to the four way stop system in the US.....
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