Murphy’s Law and Nightmares – Driving (Part 3)

24/06/19

Remember those 2 nightmares I had in succession regarding being late for something? Well it gets worse. The third night was another similar nightmare to the previous night. I dreamt that for one of my driving lessons, I think it was the autocar lesson, I wasn’t treating it seriously, like tardiness and all, and I was scolded quite a bit, I guess. and maybe I underestimated the difficulty of driving an autocar.

And then on the fourth night, I dreamt that it was finally the driving test. And I barely passed. But ended up failing because I forgot to give my IC to the tester at the end and broke some rule or something. But the actual real-life procedures are not like that so I don’t know where this dream came from. And ends up failing but luckily, I was quite chill about it. cos normally in my dreams something will happen and I will panic and cry. And shout and people will like ignore me and stuff.

So, three days in a row about disasters relating to me learning how to drive and it feels like an omen and a premonition all at once and well maybe those two are the same thing but it gives some bad feels.

Also, on to Murphy’s Law. Whatever bad that can happen will happen. Which rings true with the anecdotes of learner drivers who have never ever mounted a kerb in the few months or years of learning, yet when it comes to an important moment, so many people suddenly mount kerbs and drive on the wrong side of the road and stuff. About that, my throat is feeling kind of sandy and may be inflamed and my test is in a few days so.

Murphy’s law is also applied in queueing theory. Which states that you will always be served the last, whichever queue you choose. So, say you see the queue beside you is slightly shorter and decide to change queue. What happens is that the original queue you are in will start to move, and then it becomes shorter than the new queue. Which is quite unfortunate but very true in real life?

Driving on the road, especially in a traffic congestion, is very similar to queueing, what with the different lanes that can be taken. So the idea is that it is quite pointless to change lanes in a congestion because the original lane will then start to move and you will end up taking just as much or even more time to get to your destination as you would have if you just relaxed and stayed in the same lane throughout.

Of course, I would say this, because having to change lanes gives me anxiety. And my panic escalates exponentially as the number of other cars on the road increases.

So basically, what I would do is to avoid changing lanes as much as possible. Oh, and also because lane changing is a gradual turn and it is difficult to remember to cancel the signal.

Some points that I need to remember:

1.       To readjust the mirrors before turning out of the parking lot, and to turn down the mirrors before directional changing.

2.       To stop at the stop lines.

3.       Signals should be used early and cancelled immediately after the action is completed.

4.       tbc