At 08:35 PM 11/2/03 -0800, Bev Walker wrote: >Here in my bit of NA, and probably other bits as well, we (= my >generation) were taught to 'walk on the left, facing traffic' -
"Walk on the left -- it's SAFE" is a bit of urban legend that persists to this day; even policemen are apt to stop me to say that I should dart across a state road, walk a few yards on the left side, then dart back across the busy road. What has dropped out is that walking on the left is a *secondary* precaution. The actual rule, as I learned it on a country road in the early nineteen-forties, is "When you see or hear a car coming, get completely out of the road, up against the fence, and don't continue until that car is clear out of sight." And, by the way, walk on the left so that any cars you don't notice will be on the other side. Now that the idea of a whole family sharing one car has become ludicrous, the main rule just can't apply. But the subsidiary rule keeps being propagated. If you can't yield right-of-way to absolutely everyone who comes along, walk on the RIGHT so as to give the overtaking driver an extra millimeter to stop in. When a pedestrian is coming at me in my lane, all I can do is slam on the brakes and pray. When I come up behind one, there is a chance that I can overtake safely, and a good chance that I can slow to his speed before catching up with him. -- Joy Beeson [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://home.earthlink.net/~joybeeson/ http://home.earthlink.net/~beeson_n3f/ west of Fort Wayne, Indiana, U.S.A. where Tuesday was lovely, and I rode my bike around the lake. To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
