Doug Franklin wrote: > I suspect that it mostly boils down to "familiarity breeds contempt". > Those short, regularly traveled routes are the ones where the > driver is most likely to be running on "autopilot" because > they know the route, and probably also the most likely, > therefore, to be where they're doing everything except paying > attention to the traffic ... shaving, putting on makeup, > reading the newspaper, etc. Those are also the routes I'd > guess people would be most likely to be running late on. :-)
Every morning I nip down the road to buy a newspaper and have to cross a slow moving, very busy road. Getting eye contact with a driver to acknowledge your existence in front of her/him is fairly tricky as the route is so familiar too them, they do other things to pass the time; in the last week I've seen the obvious 'phone use, chatting, eating breakfast, finishing getting dressed for work, tie, collar buttons...Even if they do see you, do they 'see' you, do you register in their mind? The speed cameras on sections in the morning that could be activated are slowed down for and side roads are raced up instead to 'make up the time'. As a pedestrian crossing the road for a short distance it's alarming enough, but to share the road space as a cyclist with many of these people has made me considerably more nervous. I haven't worn a cycle helmet before, but I'll be looking at them this weekend :-( Malcolm -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
