Strange Motoring Customs

It was one of my good friends from the Credit Suisse days, Mike Qamar, who persuaded me that the only way to see the U.S. was by car. 3,200 miles and 18 days into our adventure, we have decided that it was good advice to follow. Here we are on the 3rd day of our stay in Zion Valley, with the journey to the Grand Canyon visit ahead of us tomorrow. It is a good opportunity to make some further observations on U.S. motoring customs, which are strange to us Brits.

I have got to grips with the four box junctions, where all have to stop and no one has priority. These are pretty smart. But I don’t think that the Brits would have the necessary patience or discipline to make this work properly. They would lock solid as soon as four cars arrived and all tried to go across at the same time.

A waiter in Salt Lake City explained the rule for turning right at a red traffic light (as well as explaining that you have four downs to make 10 yards in American Football). With a mixture of fear and trepidation, as well as excitement, I actually did this yesterday.

We have had our “Duel” moment on a highway. For those of you unfamiliar with films from the 1970s, Duel was Steven Spielberg’s first major film success. The helpless driver of a saloon car is pursued along a canyon by a truck for most of the movie, made all the more sinister by the fact that you never saw the truck driver.


The vehicles, of course, are enormous. We all know that. But I was not expecting mobile-caravans which are the size of Coaches (and towing Range Rovers behind them at the same time) or triple-articulated lorries. These are pretty scary, when they overtake you at 70.

The Americans also like to hoot their horns in car parks. I thought originally that it was because they were so pleased to arrive safely, having been pursued by a truck or overtaken by a giant motorised caravan. The real reason is that you click your automatic lock once to lock the car, and then again to make the car hoot at you to show yourself (and the whole neighbourhood) hat you have locked it. If your wife did not hear it, then you have to do it again, to show hear. If you are of a fidgety nature, like a smoker, restlessly flicking off non-existent ash off the end of his cigarette, you can do this 3 or 4 times, much to the appreciation of other motorists.

Being of an easily irritated and intolerant dispostion, even after nearly three weeks, I still find this ....well......irritating. Nevertheless, I think that it is something that other countries could build on, perhaps by having cars which play tunes, much like Ring-tones, when you did this. Perhaps we could download "hooting when parking" noises. My favourite would be the first line of “Land of Hope of Glory” or Beethoven’s fifth symphony.

On a final driving note, yesterday we took a 100 mile detour round some road works, on our way back from Bryce Canyon. We ended up driving through North Arizona as the sun was going down.