Quote:
Originally Posted by Rain Man
My guess would be that their system has a lot more minor wrecks and our system has a lot fewer wrecks, but perhaps they're more serious on average. Our system is based on people following rules strictly, which means you don't have to pay attention as much. When something bad happens, it's probably because neither driver saw it coming. There, the system is based on hypervigilance and aggression, so I bet the wrecks involve both drivers paying attention and just being unable to avoid each other.
Just a theory. I'm not sure how your German example fits. I'm talking about U.S. versus third world.
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I recently spent some time in the Dominican Republic, and was fascinated by and studied their driving. Here we have defensive driving, they have offensive driving. Here our goal is to not get hit, in the DR(and in the intersection video) their goal is to not hit anyone. It makes a lot of sense and I actually believe it's a more civil/natural way than ours. Look at the movement of the vehicles in that intersection and think of walking through a crowded airport, in the airport there are general rules(most people walk on the right, etc...) but it can look chaotic, yet it's is mostly civil and there are very few collisions. We walk to not run into people, we're not thinking about right-of-way. The car horn comes into play here as well, here the horn is mostly to signal irritation, definitely a negative sound in most circumstances, over there the horn is an excuse me, lookout I'm over here, or oops I'm sorry. Despite appearances I believe it's a less stressful way to commute.