A Lesson in Driving

Do you drive? If you don’t, then have you ever journeyed in a moving vehicle before? Yes? Good. Then either way you can identify with what I’m about to describe to you.

You are driving along the not-so-clear road and need to make a u-turn to get to your destination. Making a u-turn at the junction you happen to be at happens to be illegal. But wait! What’s that? A lane that you can turn right into! What’s so good about that lane you ask yourself – It still doesn’t allow me to make a u-turn. You take only a split second to realize that not 5 meters from the lane entrance is a turning into a car park that is parallel to the road, with traffic in the direction you want to go. You smirk to yourself thinking: I can just make an unofficial u-turn by turning into the car park and exiting the other end. I am so smart! Hah!

You do exactly that.

However, you fail to realize that the car park is simply a narrow lane about 2 car lengths wide, with official diagonal parking spaces on one side of it, and people parallel parking on the other side of it illegally. You realize this only when you are stuck behind a car that is in front of you who is reluctant to move till the driver gets a parking space. You realize this because you cannot squeeze your car though the narrow space between the car in front of you (who puts in a reasonable effort to get as close as possible to the cars parked in official parking spaces beside it) and the vehicles parked illegally parallel along the side of the lane which forms a sorry excuse for a car park. Meanwhile, you hear the car behind you sounding its horn – over and over, lasting longer each time until all you hear is a persistent high pitched BEEP!

Looking into the rear view mirror, you realize that you aren’t the only one who thought it would be a rather fine and dandy idea to enter the lane (a.k.a car park) for a substitute u-turn. There is a whole line of cars behind you.

How would you feel? What would you think?

My friends and I were caught in exactly this situation yesterday evening. The people in the car directly behind us had a blast of a time testing how long the car horn could last. It would have been more fun if everyone just started horning in tandem in different time intervals. Who knows? The differing horn sounds might have created some kind of symphony – albeit not the kind you would normally listen to pleasantly – but a rhythm of some sorts? Instead, it was just one car with one type of high-pitched sounding horn, whose incessant horning slowly transformed from a classic short two-part horn to a long continuous horn, as if running a marathon. It was annoying to say the least.

I know what some of you might be thinking. If the car in front is not moving then you have to do something to get the person to move his/her car right? Horning is the better alternative to getting down from your car and actually confronting the person.

I got pretty annoyed at the car horning behind. If horning so many times before wasn’t helping, horning incessantly isn’t going to help much either sweetheart so put a cap on it. I got annoyed at the car in front that refused to move off for what was like a good 5 minutes thereabouts – never mind that there was a whole row of cars behind or that a certain horn was creating a fair bit of noise pollution.

Later, we realized that the car was not waiting for someone as we previously thought, but waiting for a parking lot – which it finally got. Why that didn’t occur to me before is a mystery. I mean, think about it – you ARE in a car park, with a car in front of you that’s obviously not moving. However, even discovering that fact (which should have been obvious before) did not deter me from thinking instantly – why didn’t the driver just move? Didn’t he/she realize that he/she was holding up a whole lot of cars?

Then it struck me: I realized that if I were the driver in that car, I would have the worst time. My friends and I, along with the cars behind the alleged inconsiderate driver, could simply walk away from the incident with an unpleasant experience to create conversation with. We could simply attribute the time we were ‘stuck’ to the driver in front of us, as I imagine everyone else would. The car behind us was essentially not blasting its horn at us – but to the driver of the car in front of us. We were innocent parties caught in the middle – or rather, behind the source of the problem.

If I were the driver of the car causing the entire problem though, I might have a dilemma. On one hand, leaving the car park would mean having to exit to the main road (since there isn’t any other exit) and following the flow of traffic till there was a u-turn, and then double back again after that. On the other hand, staying would mean I would be holding up a whole lot of people.

After some reflection, a tiny part of me can understand why the person did not move off. Firstly, there wouldn’t have been a problem if there weren’t cars parked illegally at the side of the one lane car park. So technically, you are in no wrong but simply doing what we would consider as normal in a larger car park – waiting for a space to park. Secondly, we were all entering the car park with no intention of parking our car, so in that sense, we kind of did put ourselves into a fix.

That being said though, the u-turn wasn’t that far and ultimately I thought exiting the car park was the best course of action – albeit the most inconvenient to the trouble maker – especially given the situation at that time. To be fair, the driver was inching forward, albeit at snail speed.

Why am I going on and on about this incident you may ask?

The car behind us started horning started not a minute after we stopped. At that point of time, I thought the driver was really impatient. Think about it. For a number of us, unpleasant incidences stick in our head longer and more vividly than pleasant ones. This is how stereotyping begins. That driver behind us is one of the reasons why Singaporean drivers are known to be impatient, rude and reckless. That fact, together with the annoying horn that was sounding at the time annoyed me.

I thought the car in front of us (the culprit) was annoying too, at that point of time. Despite the reasons I mentioned (all that I could possibly think of for not moving); it would be more considerate to move your vehicle would it not?

How do we decide how long to wait before we deem it ‘reasonable’ to take action I wonder (in this instance)? Are we really impatient or are we simply taking action to prevent clear inaction?

Think about this the next time you decide to tap your horn, or vigorously jam it. Think about this the next time someone horns at you in your vehicle. The world may be a more pleasant place to live in if we could understand each other better wouldn’t it?