Driving without a care for public safety popular in Japan

Today I would like to discuss Japanese driving. You would think that with the roads being so very very narrow in my town that people might show alittle extra care when taking a blind corner. Nay. Instead the town has installed many convex mirrors allowing you to take a mere cursory glance at an incredibly distored version of what may lie on the road ahead of you before swinging your car at full speed around the corner. Also, although every car is fitted with indicators at the front and rear of the car (as is fairly standard everwhere and hardly seems a detail I need of provided), this must be much to the puzzlement of Japanese drivers who seem to find their usefulness somewhat questionable.

It need not be debated that Adelaide drivers are perfectly horrid at most times, but I think Japanese drivers are worse. While following a car at a distance necessary to my avoiding trouble I often observe it suddenly veer across the road in what appears to be an attempt at a right hand turn without the slightest hint of its intentions. Having thus cut across and seriously scared the shit out of approaching traffic, the car finds itself on the wrong side of the road and heading into a collision with another car which has unwisely considered that sticking to the correct side of the road will ensure their safety. The trouble is with physics these days; it is very hard to make a 90 degree turn in a car without slowing down from the 10 or 15 kms over the speed limit you happen to be doing, and still keep within what the law determines is your rightful area of the road.

Thankfully slow drivers are not much of an issue here since even the old folks can't help but exceed the speed limit wherever they may be. But impromptu turns and bizarrely timed manuovres seem to be prolific. And if one needs to pull up to say, reapply make up/ answer the phone/ stare about, all one need to do is stop where you are and switch on your hazard lights. In the middle of freeways, in the middle of one way streets. It really doesn't matter, so long as you switch those hazards on.

On top of the fairly large number of the population who drive as I have just described, there are also those who would fall into the Nervous Driver category. These are the people who, in spite of presumably having sat a test and learnt the give way rules of the road, are always trying to give way to others everywhere. I was lucky enough to witness such a display from within the very vehicle of a Nervous Driver. My principal gave me a lift to the city office for the welcoming of the new mayor meeting (the one where we sat around in a big circle and nodded silently at each other for 30 minutes) and it was the second most frustrating car trip of my life (the first being when my friend's uncle drove us into a hotel in Sydney and we ended up going through the tunnel instead of over the bridge and then he took us down a series of "short cuts" which were always foiled by roadworks which I knew were there but he wouldn't believe me and then getting stuck in a bunch of one way streets taking us further and further away from our destination...ARGH!!). We approach a 3 way intersection where we have right of way, all the other streets have stop signs. There is a car to our right and she stops to let it through. Obviously the other car was expecting to give way to us to it took some waiting and silent nodding and arm waving to get them to go ahead of us. This happened at every intersection. Even the lights. We approach a green light and she is looking at the waiting cars to our left and pumping the brakes as a physical indicator of her complete lack of confidence in red lights as a deterrant to people pulling out randomly. There was a lot of bowing and "please go aheads" and all that bizzo from our car and a lot of puzzled expressions and shrugs of shoulders coming from other cars who were constantly being let in the road ahead of us despite the obvious impracticality of doing so. All in all a good experience in the practices of the chronically nervous driver, but frankly it would be safer to just walk next time.