Chapter 3 - Blindspots, Mirrors, and Right of Way
A blindspot is a dog that can’t see....
No, really, a blindspot
is an area that you can’t see if you’re sitting in a normal driving position. You can eliminate most of them by adjusting your rear view mirror, and your left hand side view mirror.TIME OUT!
The right hand side view mirror is for decorative purposes only, and should NOT be trusted. Unless you have a big truck mirror over there, you should ignore the right hand side mirror!
The reason? Borrow a little mirror from your Mom, and hold it a few inches away from you. You can see everything behind you, right? Now have someone hold it four feet away from you. You see squat.
Although the convex shape DOES let you see more than a normal mirror, it will NOT cover the entire blindspot on the right hand side of the car. Although if properly adjusted, it MIGHT work okay for the lane to your immediate right, but it will NEVER cover your entire blindspot on a multi-lane highway. So just don't use it. (Even though you can nearly always HEAR cars coming when you're crossing a street, would you teach a little kid to look both ways ONLY when he hears cars coming? Do YOU do it that way? Of course not. You develop life-saving habits that work ALL THE TIME.)
Now, go sit in a parked car, and adjust your rear-view mirror like this:
- Sitting in a normal driving position, center the rearview mirror in the rear window, and then make sure you can just barely see the top edge of the top of the window. NOTE: If you can’t see both sides of the rear window in your mirror, adjust it so that you can just barely see the edge of the rear window on the passenger side.
Now adjust the left side-view so that there is NO duplication between the inside rear-view mirror, and the left side-view mirror. This will ALMOST eliminate your left hand blind spot, and if you actually turn your head to look at it - instead of just moving your eyes - you will eliminate it totally. Try that out. What you definitely DO NOT want to do is adjust it the way most people do... most people have it adjusted so they can see the side of their car, almost completely duplicating their rear-view mirror.
- Whatever you see in the left hand part of the rear view mirror is much more than two car-lengths away from you. That’s your LEFT HAND BLINDSPOT.
- Whatever you see in the right hand part of the rear view mirror is a good TWO BUS-LENGTHS away from your car! That’s your RIGHT HAND BLINDSPOT.
- You also have a blindspot directly in front of the car, and directly behind the car.
And Oh! Even the door posts create blindspots, as do other cars, bushes, road signs, and lots of other things. Sometime when you're sitting in the living room, six or seven feet away from the TV, just put your hand out in front of you about as far away as a doorpost would be in a car. You can probably cover the whole TV with your hand. Now imagine that TV coming at you at 30 MPH....
"GLANCING" vs "LOOKING" - A friend of mine (Choike) used to drive me nuts when I first met him, because he would actually LOOK in the rear view mirror, describing the car, the driver, the driver’s sex, what they were wearing, what they had dangling from their mirror....
You don’t EVER want to be "looking" anywhere except way ahead of you, in the center of the path you want to be in... but you DO need to "glance" all around constantly. A "glance" is like a quarter of a second, just to get the information you need. You need to know if there is a car behind you, but you DON"T need to know the make, year, and model.
NOTE: If that doesn’t make sense, think of a "glance" as that quick way guys have of checking out a nice looking girl, and think of "looking" as being around the time when the boyfriend comes after him. Does it make sense NOW? Whew!
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Right of way
"Right-of-way" is just a fancy word for being polite, that the lawyers made up so they could make some money. With very few exceptions, it’s just a question of who is interfering with the least number of people, and THEN it’s "first come/first to go," just like when you’re walking. It’s common sense.
When the elevator door opens, who has the "right-of-way?" The people INSIDE the elevator HAVE to get out, to make room for the new people to get in!
The ONLY rule that somebody made up that isn’t obvious is that when nothing else works, the car to your right has the right of way. That's why boats have red lights facing the left side of the boat, and a green light facing to the right. If you diagram that, you'll see that the "boat on the right" sees the green light, and has the right-of-way, and the boat to his left sees a red light, and must yield the right-of-way.
Common Areas of Confusion:- At a 4-way stop, it is "first come/first to go," regardless of whether you're going straight or turning.
- On a side street, when both you and the car opposite you both have stop signs, it is ALSO "first come/first to go," even if one of you is turning. Unfortunately, most drivers think the car going straight has the right-of-way. So although you should - as always - "take" your right-of-way, be esspecially careful in this situation, and as always - be ready if the other guy screws up.
- If you are making a left at a traffic light, you should get your car right into the intersection if you have to wait for traffic, and when the light changes, you should turn. (Just like pedestrians, once you are IN an intersection, YOU have the right-of-way.)
Remember that it’s almost ALWAYS a bad idea to "give up" your Right-of-Way! It causes too much confusion. You’re much better off just doing it the "right" way.
