Taking stock

There’s a dog-leg road junction a mile up the lane off which I live that’s made dangerous by the pub that partially obscures traffic from the right.

There’s a dog-leg road junction a mile up the lane off which I live that’s made dangerous by the pub that partially obscures traffic from the right. It’s safer in the dark when headlights show up from far off. I approached it in the second before daybreak the other morning, reckoning I wouldn’t have to stop (it’s a Give Way junction) because I’d see any lights in good time. There were lights and I saw them but I pulled out anyway and made it safely across, so nothing happened. Yet as I did it I knew I shouldn’t. So did the oncoming white van man who flashed me. He was right to be annoyed.

That set me thinking about my driving: what are my faults? It’s well known from surveys that most drivers rate themselves as above average. If I’m honest, I probably would, too. But I know I’m sometimes prone to cut it a bit fine like that because I’ve caught myself doing it before. It’s not misjudgment of speeds and distances as much as reluctance to change my mind once I’m committed to a course of action. An aspect of personality, therefore, rather than purely driving skill. You see it in many of us in many areas, ranging from deciding where to go on holiday, to arguing whether the dashing Beatty or the cautious Jellicoe was more at fault in the Battle of Jutland, to doctors disagreeing over medical diagnoses and surgical procedures. Journalists and politicians often find it particularly difficult to acknowledge evidence that they are wrong, unless they come up with it themselves.