Recently, due to necessity, I've taken to driving a bit more. Now I live in England, in a fairly large city with notoriously narrow streets and a lot of inhabitants who don't seem to realise there is such a thing as a Highway Code. When I still lived in Holland I owned a small car and used to enjoy the driving itself, although pretty soon I got quite fed-up with all the morons and maniacs on the road who seem to think it's somehow cool to show off their deathwish.
In England we have an enormous number of round-abouts. Rather than a junction or a crossing you'll often find one of these round-abouts, either with or without traffic lights. And I must admit that they work. Even when traffic is heavy a round-about will guide the flow of vehicles in a fluid and efficient manner. They really are a superb invention and one that I gather is now taken up more and more in traffic infrastructure in Holland as well for that manner.
But to my former Continental eyes the movement of cars on a round-about seems somehow a bit random or arbitrary, even though I realise it's not. When moving around one of these wide circles I never feel quite certain that drivers on either side of me are going to keep to their own lanes. There does seem to be a lot of room for error, especially when it's easy and sometimes tempting to ignore the rules.
I probably need a lot more practice so I'm not worried about my mild anxiety when driving around here. One more thing I've noticed about this town is that everyone parks just wherever the hell they want. You'll turn a sharp bend and there will be a car plonked in front of oncoming traffic, yellow lines or not.
I've always maintained that motorways and supermarkets bring out the worst in people. Given that it's hard to navigate through modern life without resorting to them, I'll just have to deal with it.
Probably to be continued..
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