Originally Posted by chipcom
Again, you either follow the rules or you don't - what other people do has no bearing and I've yet to see a law that says 'the spirit of the law is as follows, just doing this is fine'.
LOL. Aren't you the one often accusing me of imagining dichotomies where none exist?
You, by the way, are equating rules with laws.
Actually, the "rules of the road" according to which almost all drivers drive their vehicles is not defined by law. It is defined by the cultural understanding of a few basic principles. Evidence: what percent of drivers do you think have ever even cracked open the vehicle code (paper or pdf)? I bet less than 1%. So, the "rules of the road" are those that people learn in driving school and from skimming through the driver's manual. Regardless of where they learn what those rules are, everyone who drives a car, the vast majority of all adults, has a concept of what they are, enough to drive a car according to them.
The undocumented rules of the road according to which drivers and vehicular cyclists actually operate on roadways are not one and the same with the documented laws of the road to which they must technically adhere in order to not get a ticket.
I asked before, both long ago and again in this thread - where are the 'rules of the road for vehicles' documented? I mean if you are gonna follow rules, don't you think they should be published and approved by some authorative source? In the context of Brian's OP, where specifically is the rule that says some vehicles can share lanes, while others cannot, along with an outline of which vehicles the rule is applicable to? Where's the rule that says 'it's ok to yield rather than stop for a red light or stop sign'?
The rules by which the vast majority of drivers and vehicular cyclists operate on roadways are not documented. Note that the vehicle code laws in CA are defined in a completely separate document from the one where the ones in AZ (and every other state, not to mention every other country) are specified. Yet people in CA drive in AZ and vice versa without so much as a peak at
either document.
The undocumented rules of the road according to which drivers and vehicular cyclists actually operate on roadways are not one and the same with the documented laws of the road to which they must technically adhere in order to not get a ticket.
Don't confuse one with the other.