On Thursday 08 Nov 2007 10:03 pm, Dave Long wrote: > If I > ever go back to the States, I'd probably be dead within the month, > having picked up the habit of walking in front of moving cars without > a second thought.
The reason you don't die here is that people who used to die were promised more lives, but there is some dispute about that and the matter is in court. Since it is not a life or death issue (death only - see?) it isn't urgent, and there is a court stay on deaths until about 75,000 other cases are disposed. Having provided the correct explanation (as always) I want to say that a young man who was either a foreign student or a tourist stepped in front of my car in the middle of a road with about 4.7 lanes of traffic in 3 marked lanes. I treated him like I treat cows on the road - i.e I veered towards his tail end and he spotted that and did what he had to do. He read the cue and deftly stepped forward and walked out of the way. That was a guy who had learned survival tricks in Bangalore. The rule that one must always head for the tail end of an animal (especially cows) was taught to me by a classmate of mine in Pondicherry 30 years ago where he displayed an uncanny knack of navigating (on a motorcycle) what appeared to be dense traffic consisting of an impossible mix of vehicles, pedestrians , animals and handcarts. shiv
