For a change, I drove to the place I was teaching at today. I often drive places but not to where I work. For some reason as I was driving today, I noticed a lot of cars with “old driver signs” (this is a literal translation, it is not good English!). The reason why they stuck out, was because a lot of the signs were attached to luxury cars.
It got me thinking.
Although I would like to think that I treat all people equally, I am only human and therefore cannot help treating people differently according to what kind of person they are. A good example would be how I talk to my family and how I talk to people at work. I speak more politely to people at work.
On the roads in Japan, there are “new driver badges” and “old driver badges”. In England there are no such badges. People use an “L Plate” (if you want to see what one looks like, put “L Plate” into your favourite image search engine) if they are learning to drive, but other than that, there are no equivalent stickers.
So in Japan, new drivers and old drivers are marked by their badges. I assume that the reason people put them on is to warn people that the car may be driven a bit erraticaly and possibly more space should be given to the car.
However, I think maybe the opposite happens. When I am waiting to join a road, and there are many cars, if I see a new or old driver, I usually think “this person will go slowly, so I have time to join the road”. Unfortunately, this is the exact opposite of what is supposed to happen. The badges become a symbol for “slow car, you can pull out in front of it”
I don’t know if it is just me who does this. So any other people take advantage of new or old drivers?
