Path: utzoo!mnetor!tmsoft!dptcdc!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!csri.toronto.edu!clarke
From: clarke@csri.toronto.edu (Jim Clarke)
Newsgroups: ont.general
Subject: Re: Highway Driving Rules
Message-ID: <8904101406.AA16291@king.csri.toronto.edu>
Date: 10 Apr 89 14:06:26 GMT
References: <13189@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
Distribution: ont
Organization: University of Toronto, CSRI
Lines: 29


Gee, we're really having fun here with this topic, aren't we?  Here's my
contribution:

Somebody said he was annoyed by high beams flashed to say, "I'm about to
pass you."  This indeed seems unnecessary on busy divided highways, but
on two-lane roads that are only intermittently used -- the situation where
this custom arose, I presume -- it's a very useful custom.  If you've
been following a car for quite a while, waiting for a chance to pass,
the driver you're following doesn't really have a way of knowing when
you're going to judge it's safe to overtake, so he/she really does learn
something from the flashed beams.  Also, if both drivers do it right,
there's a carefully-timed sequence of beam up and down changes to make
sure that nobody's blinded and that the driver in front can see the
upcoming curves, bumps, etc.  The sequence is done better by drivers
who are awake, as they might be after the warning flash.

Things are really very different on two-lane roads from four-lane ones.
And I notice that a lot of drivers now seem not to know how to deal with
the two-lane situation, at least in the areas around Toronto where I
get a chance to watch.  Maybe in northern Ontario the old skills are still
alive.

My gosh, I sound old.
-- 
Jim Clarke -- Dept. of Computer Science, Univ. of Toronto, Canada M5S 1A4
              (416) 978-4058
clarke@csri.toronto.edu     or    clarke@csri.utoronto.ca
   or ...!{uunet, pyramid, watmath, ubc-cs}!utai!utcsri!clarke