> the less educated you are, the more likely you are to believe you know what makes sense
It actually frightens me how true this statement is.
To reinforce my initial position about how important the rules are for setting expectations, I usually use cyclists as an example. Many follow the proposed rules, understanding they are traffic, and right of way is not automagically granted based on the choice of vehicle, having more to do with direction and the flow of said traffic.
But there's always a bad apple, a cyclist who assumes themselves to be exempt from the rules and rides against the flow of traffic, then wonders why they got clipped because a right-turning driver wasn't expecting a vehicle to be coming from the direction traffic is not supposed to come from.
In the end, it's not really about what we drive or how we get around, but whether we are self-aware enough to understand that the rules apply to us, and collectively so. Setting the expectation of what each of our behaviors will be is precisely what creates the safety that comes with following them, and only the dummies seem to be the ones who think they are exempt.
It actually frightens me how true this statement is.
To reinforce my initial position about how important the rules are for setting expectations, I usually use cyclists as an example. Many follow the proposed rules, understanding they are traffic, and right of way is not automagically granted based on the choice of vehicle, having more to do with direction and the flow of said traffic.
But there's always a bad apple, a cyclist who assumes themselves to be exempt from the rules and rides against the flow of traffic, then wonders why they got clipped because a right-turning driver wasn't expecting a vehicle to be coming from the direction traffic is not supposed to come from.
In the end, it's not really about what we drive or how we get around, but whether we are self-aware enough to understand that the rules apply to us, and collectively so. Setting the expectation of what each of our behaviors will be is precisely what creates the safety that comes with following them, and only the dummies seem to be the ones who think they are exempt.