|
Frogs
turn into princes
(Filed: 09/11/2002)
French drivers are polite and considerate, says Max
Davidson, who reluctantly came to this heretical conclusion
after a motoring holiday in France showed up British drivers
as champion louts.
This hurts. This really hurts. I have just come back from
a driving holiday in France, fabled for its rude motorists,
the dernier cri in arrogant, selfish driving, and I have got
to admit it: man for man, woman for woman, they are now far
more considerate road users than us. Far more considerate.
Oh,
you still get those Parisian roadhogs, sweeping down the fast
lane of the autoroute to the South of France in their Peugeots,
lights flashing, as if they owned the country. You still see
overtaking of criminal recklessness. But by and large, the
etiquette of the road is scrupulously observed.
Drivers give way to each other with a wave and a smile. Unseemly
scrambles for parking spaces are virtually unknown. Even long
tailbacks on motorways, of the kind that send British motorists
into a frenzy, are met with a Gallic shrug. Drivers just switch
off their engines, light up a cigarette and start flirting
with the driver of the next car.
Contrast that with the increasingly fractious, anti-social
behaviour you see on roads in this country. I suppose we have
the excuse that traffic congestion is worse here than in France,
but how long are we going to use that as an alibi for our
collective loutishness?
Example. I am driving north out of Oxford on the Woodstock
Road. There is a queue of cars behind me and another queue
of cars coming in the opposite direction. I want to turn right
down a one-way street, so I put on my indicator and slow down,
waiting for one of the oncoming cars to let me through.
Dream on! The other drivers just carry on impervious, three,
four, five, six of them What are they gaining by not letting
me through? It would not slow up their journey by a nanosecond,
while the traffic behind me is stationary, waiting for me
to turn. Seven, eight, nine, 10 I feel like that poor guy
in the Bible, lying half dead in the ditch, waiting for the
Good Samaritan to show up.
Eventually, the Samaritan does appear, in the form of a white-haired
old dear in a battered Renault, who flashes her lights to
let me through. I smile my appreciation. The cars held up
behind me resume their stop-go journey. Someone hoots his
horn. A cyclist makes a V-sign. Just another day on the roads
of urban Britain.
Second example. I am staying at a hotel in Sussex preparatory
to going to a 50th birthday party. I emerge into the car park
to find that someone has parked his car directly behind mine:
the only way out is via the croquet lawn and rhododendrons.
A full 10 minutes pass before the owner of the offending car
is traced and I can get to my party. "I'm so sorry,"
he simpers. "My fault." Well, of course it's his
fault. Does he think there is any question whose fault it
is?
In inner cities, anti-social parking has reached epidemic
proportions. You can hardly drive down a high street without
finding a car or van parked up on the kerb, with its hazard
lights flashing, holding up traffic in both directions. The
"emergency" usually turns out to be nothing more
substantial than the fact that the driver has run out of fags.
In fact, you're lucky if he puts on his emergency lights at
all. Half the people driving in Britain seem to regard indicators
as optional extras, like airbags or CD players. Sometimes
they let their fellow drivers know they are about to turn
left. Sometimes - if they have more important things to do,
like chatting to their mates on the mobile about the Arsenal-Newcastle
match - they don't bother.
It's the law of the jungle out there and it's affecting us
all. Drivers who would have been courteous at the wheel 10
years ago no longer make the same effort. Why show consideration
to fellow motorists when, at any minute, you are likely to
be overtaken on the inside by some boy racer who thinks he
is at Le Mans? Or be carved up by a woman who thinks the school
run is sacrosanct? Or be hooted at by some stroppy lorry driver
rushing to get to Dover in time for a pint before the ferry?
None of us is perfect. Let he who has never sneaked into a
bus lane throw the first stone, and all that. But isn't it
time that, as a community, we rediscovered the art of good
manners? |
