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Courtesy

This week the Ed at work Matt G has been cruising around Italy and sent back an editorial about the traffic over there being a case of controlled chaos. The crux of his story was, somehow it all worked. So Mr G decided to ask the public their ideas on what foreign road rules should be imported into NZ to 'improve' our driving experience.
My idea - which since I work for the magazine I won't put forward there (awkward much) is this. It isn't found often overseas, and is a rare thing to find here in NZ, but one thing we can definitely use more of is a splash of common sense and courtesy.
In terms of common sense, I find it would be a fantastic thing if people would cease to abruptly alter lanes without indication and use said common sense and realize that not all the motorists around them have the gift of foresight and can predict there every move. All one needs to do to see multiple cases of this very dodgy act of full scale dodgems is to cruise along any of Auckland's motorways between 8am and 10am.
On courtesy (which btw I have only just learnt to spell, why is it not spelled phonetically?), and this is aimed more at the two wheeled fraternity, is the need of some to take up as much space as possible when parking in designated motorcycle spaces. As a motorcyclist myself I do see the need to park with enough space either side to allow for getting on and off without attempting to become the worlds greatest contortionist, but some people take up so much space, mostly by parking horizontally in angle parks. If we could import some courtesy and thinking about others needs as well we might just make it up the ladder of nations with a bit of respect for motoring skill...

Or we could take a page out of Russia's book and be incredibly skillful amid complete and utter chaos on the roads


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