Driving as Work
August 1st 2007 20:10
Today’s work was driving. I drove from Cromer to Attleborough, and back again. It’s not a long distance, only some 25 miles each way, but it takes about an hour all up. Getting to Norwich is the first stretch, and that’s pretty straightforward - straightforward enough for us to listen to a story on tape. But getting through Norwich is painful; it’s slow and requires a lot of concentration for drivers who don’t know the area well enough. There are places where it looks as though you should merge, and then you find that you don’t need to; there are roundabouts galore; there are lights for going straight ahead but not to the right and you only find that the red light for the latter doesn’t apply to you when you‘re practically on top of it. I’ve been driving for quite a long time now - some thirty plus years - but I don’t enjoy driving in England’s cities very much.
And then there are the lanes. Because there’s so little traffic on them, you’d think that would make them easier. But the problem is that they’re virtually single lane and if you do meet someone else coming towards you, there’s usually a rapid deployment of brakes on the part of both drivers. Depending on whether the other driver is one of those people who never stops whatever, you may find yourself running up the bank. If the other driver stops, you have to edge past each other, or wait while the other person edges past you. And you can never see more than 500 yards or so ahead, because the lanes are full of corners, and the corners, like the rest of the lanes, are overgrown with hedgerows.
I guess it all adds to one’s driving skills.
And then there are the lanes. Because there’s so little traffic on them, you’d think that would make them easier. But the problem is that they’re virtually single lane and if you do meet someone else coming towards you, there’s usually a rapid deployment of brakes on the part of both drivers. Depending on whether the other driver is one of those people who never stops whatever, you may find yourself running up the bank. If the other driver stops, you have to edge past each other, or wait while the other person edges past you. And you can never see more than 500 yards or so ahead, because the lanes are full of corners, and the corners, like the rest of the lanes, are overgrown with hedgerows.
I guess it all adds to one’s driving skills.
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