Road Rules

What the hell is the deal with drivers in intersections looking right and merely glancing left?!

You know what, I'm going to (ironically) be the bigger person here and forget for a moment that a whopping four of you almost killed me during my ride about town this afternoon in order to provide you with two pieces of wisdom.

NUMBER 1

In this culture, we are taught from a VERY young age (think infancy) to read things from left to right.  Keep in mind here, I'm saying read things, not books.  As soon as we are born, we begin looking around.  We may not immediately track anything specific but we see the way our caregivers do and we pick up on that. Guess what we begin to notice? They're tracking left to right. Since babies begin to mimic what they see it's no surprise that you developed this behavioral trait.  In fact, by three months, when you were visually tracking faces, situations, stimuli, and other things, you did it from... (dat dat dada) left to right. Then, when you were introduced to picture books, signs, and eventually  words, this left to right looking  thing was repeatedly reinforced.  So, what you're doing at intersections is counterintuitive.  It makes no sense, and you're likely putting in more effort to combat your habitualized pattern of scanning surroundings to engage in a potentially dangerous behavior. Which leads me to my second point.

NUMBER 2

Unless you're  a brand new driver, this should be common sense, but just for the sake of your own edification I'm going to remind you of something rather crucial. Brace yourselves. Are you ready for it?

K.  Here it is:

The oncoming traffic closest to you is coming from your left side!

While you're peering past the empty passenger seat of your likely over-sized death wagon, you are completely missing that "jackass" who is about to come "out of nowhere" to t-bone you.  This is the thing that baffles me the most.  You'd think you're own inherent sense of self-preservation would protect you from missing this, but it appears it doesn't. 

Alright.  I'll quit ranting now, but before I go, do us all a favor, and start to think about what you're doing behind the wheel.  You might just save a life.