Courtesy

Courtesy is a funny thing. Most of the people have no idea about that at all. Here is an example.

If and when I travel I always rent a car. When I drive wherever I am I try to fit in to the local environment and follow their driving customs. Take St. Maarten for example.

Most of the people drive there, the roads are narrow and there are marked and unmarked intersections. When one tries to enter into a main(er) road one has to wait until someone slows down or stops to permit entry. Now here in the States the car would run out its warranty before somebody would do that, but down there before long some driver (not American) will slow down and waive to you to enter the mainstream of traffic.

Behaviour like that is so encouraging that I picked up on it and did it down there and then I tried to hold on to it and continued doing it here back home. But then I realized, why? Nobody gave a damn about my courteous behavior so I just went back to the good old accepted ways. Cut off cars, don't let anybody ahead of me and just drive like everybody else. This way I fit in!

Sorry to say but I found that women drivers in general are more discourteous than men drivers. And amongst men blue collar drivers are more courteous than others. A man in a pick up truck will more likely let me in the line ahead of him than a white collar man or a woman. A woman will surely close up ranks rather than let somebody ahead of her.

Now why is that? I wonder if anybody ever done such a survey. If they did they were probably afraid to publish it because of the gender backlash.

I really don't care, I can take a gender backlash any day!

Here is another car related subject that really has nothing to do with driving.

One day I was driving on a NY parkway when in the lane next to me there was an open top sports car. I think it was either a Ferrari or a Maserati or one of those super expensive sport cars. There was nothing wrong with it, I admired it until the bloke past me. Then I saw it had a MD licence plate. MD means doctor, a physician in New York State. Now this surprised me because the doctors I know or I see on the roads don't go around flaunting how well they do.

Doctors usually drive good, reliable cars but not super expensive, show off cars. I can not say it was unethical but certainly in my mind it was not the right thing to do. If he was that well off maybe his second car should have been this sports car.

I used to know a doctor who could have afforded a very expensive automobile but decided to drive a good, reliable, not expensive car instead, saying that if his patients saw the expensive car in his driveway they would have been frightened off. Now for me that was the right attitude.