The roads and standards of driving |
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 The road system
suffers badly in winter. It's an unhealthy mixture of
ice, salt and studded tires. As a result there are always
a lot of road works in spring and summer. They appear
to employ an onion principle to their roads; build them
up high then remove successive layers until you're down
to the hardcore then start the process again. Now that
seems reasonable until you bear in mind the hazard of
manholes. When the road is first laid the surface is
quite a bit higher than the man hole cover, as a result
you have a nice round hazard you got to watch for. Then
as successive layers are removed you are left with a
protuberance the size of a submarine conning tower and
since you can change from layer to layer along the same
stretch of road it makes for varied and exciting riding.
Roundabouts have thrown the poor Norwegian driver in considerable confusion. On several occasions have I witnessed to my alarm, a driver overshooting a roundabout exit, slamming on the brakes and reversing back to realign himself with the missed exit. It really gets the blood pumping to enter a roundabout and find a car reversing itself towards you! In general the standard of driving is bloody awful, not on North African scales but pretty close to Italian standards. The absolutely worst thing that can happen to a Norwegian driver is that he has to give way. I have seen two drivers in slow traffic edge towards each other until they collided with neither making any effort to avoid it! Also one rule that can really catch you out is that on minor roads (and you have no way of knowing what that is), traffic joining from the right has priority over traffic going straight. I tell you these guys don't even check if you're there, they just come right out of that junction. Here's one that will really catch you out. Busses have absolute priority! That means when they want to pull out they will and you'd better not be trying to overtake at the time or they'll push you right into the oncoming traffic.
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Copyright(c) 2001 Rogue Art. All rights reserved.