Project Kahn’s new rules of the road

Project Kahn’s new rules of the road thumbnail
1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (No Ratings Yet)
Loading ... Loading ...
By Admin
Published: April 21, 2009
Project Kahn’s new rules of the road
There is little doubt that the Highway Code is hopelessly out of date in some areas; the recommended braking distances have not changed in 60 years, despite the improvements in technology.
At Kahnnews.com we thought it was perhaps time to look at how people actually drive today and, with our tounges firmly in our cheeks, recommend some new guidelines to survive the drive in 21st century Britain.
Avoid eye contact
Now this shouldn’t be a difficult one at all for most Brits, famed as we are for being one of the most reticent races on earth. Really the natural place for all of us is inside our own climate controlled metal boxes, isolated from each other and outside the world.
Avoiding eye contact with other motorists means never feeling embarrassed about cutting someone up, barging your way into a queue of traffic or selfishly failing to let someone out of a junction, but off course it allows everyone else to do exactly the same to you.
Never use your headlights
This is something I first noticed when driving in Egypt; use of lights was confined to either sidelights or full beam so that an approaching motorist was either invisible or dazzled us. The trend doesn’t seem to have spread quite this far as yet but there is definitely a British equivalent.
This is a combination of sidelights and fog lights in any conditions other than bright sunlight. This may be less extreme than the Middle Eastern practice but it is no less irritating and in certain conditions just as dazzling and dangerous.
Fail to understand what the word ‘average’ means
A new generation of speed cameras is being used, quite sensibly, along stretches of motorway road works in order to protect the people who, at least occasionally, work on them.
These actually work by remembering number plates and timing their progress between sets of cameras to calculate an average speed.
Now anyone with a rudimentary grasp of maths should be able to understand the concept of average. However, the nation’s maths teachers obviously need to sit down and explain things very slowly to those people who continue to barrel up the motorway only to brake heavily in front of a camera gentry.
Buy an SUV
In fact these days, it is possible to buy that most baffling of products, a two-wheel drive SUV. However, what SUVs are very good at is coping with the terrible tarmac of our towns and dodgy terrain, so use the car wisely….
Ignore Road Markings
Drive down the average city centre street in Britain and you will be bombarded with advice, instructions and warnings from countless signs and markings. With so much to take in, the brain has little remaining capacity for the business of controlling the car.
Holland, Germany and Sweden have already recognised this and are experimenting with “naked roads” where markings are removed and cars and pedestrians share the same space. And far from leading to a grand theft auto style blood bath, average speeds have dropped and accident rates have fallen as drivers are forced to pay more attention to their surroundings.
Undertake
This is rapidly becoming a necessity in order to make progress on our choked motorways, largely down to the prevalence of middle lane hogs who fail to grasp that their selfish actions transform a three-lane road into a dual carriageway.
Kahnnews.com does not propose weaving in and out of traffic in the manner of an American blockbuster but there are few things more irritating when driving at a steady speed on a quiet motorway than having to move all the way from the left hand lane to the other side of the carriageway in order to pass someone dawdling along obliviously in the centre.
Park carelessly
Cars are getting longer, taller, heavier and wider. And with ever more of them, space is actually becoming a premium. Obviously there is little any of us can do to ease the situation out on the road, unless we happen to have a handy team of surveyors, engineers and road builders.
However, we could all make a difference when we’re not driving our cars by learning to park them properly. Consider how many times you have seen a car, generally an SUV, not so much parked as seemingly abandoned across two spaces in a supermarket and the knock on effect, once the car in question has left.
Handbrake, what handbrake?
You remember, the little lever, or increasingly now, the switch, down by your left hand. Now during your driving test, you would have been taught to use this at traffic lights, certain junctions and during manoeuvres to maintain full control of the car.
As with most of the driving test, this is quickly forgotten in the real world and now it is standard practice when at the traffic lights to leave the car in gear and use the footbrake rather than the handbrake which not only strains the transmission but dazzles the driver in the car behind but doubtless they are doing the same.
Bunch together for safety
Making fast progress away from the motorway can be a very enjoyable experience unless one comes upon the bane of the B-road, the lorry. Well actually not the lorries themselves, which are limited at 40mph but rather the motorists caught behind them, of which there may be several.
All of these drivers will be either unwilling or unable to commit to an overtaking manoeuvre and will have bunched together creating a metal tail to the lorry’s comet. Attempts to overtake will be frustrated because the following cars will be too close together so that anyone catching one of these rolling roadblocks will have no choice but to join it.

Project Kahn’s new rules of the road

There is little doubt that the Highway Code is hopelessly out of date in some areas; the recommended braking distances have not changed in 60 years, despite the improvements in technology.

At Kahnnews.com we thought it was perhaps time to look at how people actually drive today and, with our tounges firmly in our cheeks, recommend some new guidelines to survive the drive in 21st century Britain.

Avoid eye contact

Now this shouldn’t be a difficult one at all for most Brits, famed as we are for being one of the most reticent races on earth. Really the natural place for all of us is inside our own climate controlled metal boxes, isolated from each other and outside the world.

Avoiding eye contact with other motorists means never feeling embarrassed about cutting someone up, barging your way into a queue of traffic or selfishly failing to let someone out of a junction, but off course it allows everyone else to do exactly the same to you.

Never use your headlights

This is something I first noticed when driving in Egypt; use of lights was confined to either sidelights or full beam so that an approaching motorist was either invisible or dazzled us. The trend doesn’t seem to have spread quite this far as yet but there is definitely a British equivalent.

This is a combination of sidelights and fog lights in any conditions other than bright sunlight. This may be less extreme than the Middle Eastern practice but it is no less irritating and in certain conditions just as dazzling and dangerous.

Fail to understand what the word ‘average’ means

A new generation of speed cameras is being used, quite sensibly, along stretches of motorway road works in order to protect the people who, at least occasionally, work on them.

These actually work by remembering number plates and timing their progress between sets of cameras to calculate an average speed.

Now anyone with a rudimentary grasp of maths should be able to understand the concept of average. However, the nation’s maths teachers obviously need to sit down and explain things very slowly to those people who continue to barrel up the motorway only to brake heavily in front of a camera gentry.

Buy an SUV

In fact these days, it is possible to buy that most baffling of products, a two-wheel drive SUV. However, what SUVs are very good at is coping with the terrible tarmac of our towns and dodgy terrain, so use the car wisely….

Ignore Road Markings

Drive down the average city centre street in Britain and you will be bombarded with advice, instructions and warnings from countless signs and markings. With so much to take in, the brain has little remaining capacity for the business of controlling the car.

Holland, Germany and Sweden have already recognised this and are experimenting with “naked roads” where markings are removed and cars and pedestrians share the same space. And far from leading to a grand theft auto style blood bath, average speeds have dropped and accident rates have fallen as drivers are forced to pay more attention to their surroundings.

Undertake

This is rapidly becoming a necessity in order to make progress on our choked motorways, largely down to the prevalence of middle lane hogs who fail to grasp that their selfish actions transform a three-lane road into a dual carriageway.

Kahnnews.com does not propose weaving in and out of traffic in the manner of an American blockbuster but there are few things more irritating when driving at a steady speed on a quiet motorway than having to move all the way from the left hand lane to the other side of the carriageway in order to pass someone dawdling along obliviously in the centre.

Park carelessly

Cars are getting longer, taller, heavier and wider. And with ever more of them, space is actually becoming a premium. Obviously there is little any of us can do to ease the situation out on the road, unless we happen to have a handy team of surveyors, engineers and road builders.

However, we could all make a difference when we’re not driving our cars by learning to park them properly. Consider how many times you have seen a car, generally an SUV, not so much parked as seemingly abandoned across two spaces in a supermarket and the knock on effect, once the car in question has left.

Handbrake, what handbrake?

You remember, the little lever, or increasingly now, the switch, down by your left hand. Now during your driving test, you would have been taught to use this at traffic lights, certain junctions and during manoeuvres to maintain full control of the car.

As with most of the driving test, this is quickly forgotten in the real world and now it is standard practice when at the traffic lights to leave the car in gear and use the footbrake rather than the handbrake which not only strains the transmission but dazzles the driver in the car behind but doubtless they are doing the same.

Bunch together for safety

Making fast progress away from the motorway can be a very enjoyable experience unless one comes upon the bane of the B-road, the lorry. Well actually not the lorries themselves, which are limited at 40mph but rather the motorists caught behind them, of which there may be several.

All of these drivers will be either unwilling or unable to commit to an overtaking manoeuvre and will have bunched together creating a metal tail to the lorry’s comet. Attempts to overtake will be frustrated because the following cars will be too close together so that anyone catching one of these rolling roadblocks will have no choice but to join it.

Tagged with:

Email This Post Email This Post