35 years ago New Zealand introduced a give way to the right rule on the road. Until 5am on the 25 March this year that remained the rule of the road causing a fair degree of confusion for drivers from abroad because this country was, apparently, the only country in the world with that totally counter-intuitive rule. In Europe a potentially ignorant foreign driver can often be identified by his country's number/registration plate but this is one of the few countries where there are no 'foreign' cars (for all practical purposes).
In fact when Gaz visited a few months ago he pointed out that at T junctions no one seemed to follow the correct procedure anyway and if exiting a side road onto a main road (top of the T) usually gave way to the traffic on the main road entering the side road. In fact when I asked a number of my Kiwi friends they all adopted that approach. A clear case of a silly or counter-intuitive law just being ignored and the following ditty being very apt:
Who died defending his right of way
His way was right
And his will was strong
But he's just as dead as if he'd been wrong
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Great ditty! That's what I used to tell my kids when they were littluns and using the zebra crossing. I'd say, yes, they ARE supposed to stop, but you should still look very carefully, give them time to stop, and never, never run!
ReplyDeleteGood little poem! Yes, it is an idiotic rule. A bit like priorite a droite. I can't bear driving in a foreign country, always terrified I'm going to do the wrong thing, (and I often do)
ReplyDeleteI visited your blog specially because I was writing you an email and realised I hadn't seen ANY of your recent posts - what on earth is up with my blog feed? Sigh, another stupid technical problem I suppose.........