Once we get back home from our holiday in the US I can see that we will need to watch our step on the roads - both as pedestrians and drivers - as we have grown accustomed over the past month to American road manners.
Of course most people, at different times, are both drivers and pedestrians, though to observe people’s behaviour on UK roads you’d never think it. In the UK it’s as if the category of road user you just don’t happen to be right now, suddenly becomes a figure to be feared or despised. When in the pedestrian mode, for example, we loathe drivers who lurch threateningly forwards the instant the lights have changed whilst, as drivers, we become enraged by pedestrians who have the misfortune to get in our way.
In the US the situation appears to be entirely different. It’s as if the contract between motorists and pedestrians has been rewritten. In towns, cars travel slowly and sedately along wide streets. Pedestrians don’t stray across the road, people wait for the ‘walk’ sign at crossings and in return motorists give way whenever it appears there is any doubt as to the right of way. It’s refreshing, civilised and (I imagine) safer.
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