What is the right of way when you are driving along a highway? It constitutes your right of passage according to rules as the traffic flows, your right to take precedence over any oncoming vehicle’s actions or intent or those of one emerging from a by-lane.
But step back for a moment and reflect. Don’t you think a lot of accidents can be avoided and a lot of acrimony thrown by the wayside if we do not become the slaves and sticklers of the ‘right of way’ syndrome? Driving will be such pleasure if we did that.
As it is, under the ‘right of way’ rule, if you are going straight on a highway and a vehicle is trying to join the highway emerging from a lane to your right, it must wait for you to pass through and then only join the traffic. It is none of your concern that the person emerging from the lane could, for good reason, be in a hurry to get ahead of you.
Nor is it your concern that since you won’t allow him to get ahead of him he may have to wait for a dozen other vehicles behind you until they too have all passed through.
Also sometimes two lanes sometimes merge into one because of the ongoing road expansion or repairs. As a consequence the vehicles in the one or the other lane have to give way to those in the ‘wrong’ lane of the moment. But many drivers do not fail to insist on their right of way even in that desperate scenario. Imagine, if everyone stuck to his ‘right of way’ gun, not a single vehicle in the ‘wrong’ lane would be able to move an inch.
Remember, quite a few accidents are caused because one of the party loses patience. The ‘right of way’ driver asserts his right standing on the high pedestal of the traffic rule book. But the driver emerging from the lane too is keen to take his chance and is busy slowly inching forward. And a point comes when one or the other must stop to avoid a collision.
Agreed that one must drive according to the traffic rules. Yet at times it is better to give way and surrender one’s little right of the moment. Maybe he is genuinely in a hurry. Who knows if by giving an inch you can avoid a collision and a scene, and a traffic jam and the hassle of waiting for the traffic police or a visit to the police station why not? And when you give way when it is your ‘right of way’, you will discover you will also feel good within for having done a little favour to a fellow driver.