night driving
Frank and I have been away at our annual church camp for a couple of days - thankyou to my brother for yesterday posting the post I prepared earlier. (Does this comply with the rules? I'm not sure, but technically my blog was posted on yesterday) I now have exactly fifty minutes left to post in today.
(You'll be pleased to know that this year we had an almost full tank of petrol and weren't left in a NaBloPoMo panic after scrounging around country Tasmania for a petrol card on the Sunday night of a long weekend)
While driving home I had some thoughts about night driving:
First, I don't like it. My eyes aren't great at night and I find myself dazzled by the bright lights.
Second, while I try and drive carefully, it is the other people on the road who concern me most. I know I'll stick to my side of the road but will they stick to theirs? Undivided road is the most concerning and Tasmania has lots of it. For some reason this concerns me more at night than during the day.
Third, I don't quite understand why we think it's safe to hurtle along at high speed when we can only see a few hundred metres in front of us. We call ourselves advanced and developed, but this strikes me as a foolish, ignorant thing to do. (However I still do it)
Fourth, I find the whole 'high beam - low beam' headlight deal fascinating. It tells me if the driver coming the other way is alert. (if they fail to dim their lights does that mean they are asleep?) It keeps me alert and awake as I try and ensure I'm not dazzling the other driver. It's also a source of endless chatter fodder: 'That person dimmed their lights late Frank... how rude is that?!'
I love watching for the bright lights of a hidden driver behind the hill lighting the horizon, then trying to dip my own lights JUST as they come over the crest. And best of all, when someone overtakes me, I love to see if I can dim my lights at the exact moment they turn their lights up!
I suspect this fascination stems back to long night time drives as a child, where we drove for 24 hours at a time to visit my grandparents with little more entertainment than the five kilometre markers and the dance of the high beams.
Interesting and entertaining as high beam lights are, I'm very glad to be home and about to turn the lights out!
Labels: car, life, nablopomo 07
posted by cecily @ 11:03 pm
3 comments
3 Comments:
So glad you made it home safely!
Your thoughts about hurtling through the darkness at high speeds is one I've had many a time, too. Such a stupid thing to do, and yet, we do it.
Do you have many undivided main roads? Here they are slow-speed backroads, very very back roads, and uncommon.
I'm fortunate that most of my night driving is along well-lit roads!
Up here, all our roads are undivided 'backroads'. The worst hazards here are related: speed & moose. Although the younger folk tend to speed, the tourists seem to always be going too fast for our roads. Moose are such a hazard because neither their eyes nor fur reflect light and they're usually tall enough to be above the headlight beams on low. That often means speeders end up having a moose literally in their laps after crashing through the windshield. As small moose weigh in at 800-1000pounds, you can imagine the results.
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