My driving instructor always taught me the easiest way to remember what to do when two cars may have to give way to each other is to picture in your mind what would happen should both you and the other vehicle go at the same time (neither giving way.) Whoever manages to get their drivers door (on the right) smashed into by the other is the one that should've given way. I'm pretty sure that works in all situations... Neil Edmund A. Hintz wrote:
On Wed, Jan 5, 2005, Mark Foster thus spake:
(The number of accidents caused by tourists who reflexively dodge the wrong way is not insignificant).
Oooh, this brings to mind one other gotcha: the left turn yield law down here. Easier to demonstrate than describe, but I'll give it a go...
Say you're sitting in the middle of the road, waiting on a break in oncoming traffic so you can turn across it. Down here, unlike almost everywhere else, if the oncoming vehicle is turning onto the same street, the *oncoming* car must give way (the vehicle turning across the lanes has the right of way). Here, this means that the left turning vehicle yields-in the states this would be the right turning vehicle (i.e., you're turning left at a US intersection, the oncoming car is turning right onto the same street, *you* have the right of way). This one pretty regularly gets a tourist in trouble, as they are often unaware of the different rules and fail to yield, sometimes with rather spectacular results.
It sounds odd, but it does make sense because of local conditions-the roads tend to be quite narrow, so it's desirable to get vehicles out of the middle of the road as quickly as possible.
<http://www.ltsa.govt.nz/travellers/english-driving-safely-in- nz.html#intersections>
Regards,
Ed Hintz ed(a)hintz.org
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