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# Posted 8:41 AM by Patrick Belton

WALKING BAD FOR YOU, DRIVING SAFE: Friends, parents and concerned bystanders, noting I possess the habit of from time to time driving on the continent (on the right, ideally), in Britain and Ireland (on the left, same qualifier), and occasionally ferrying David about in the States (in a super-fly Cadillac El Dorado, side irrelevant), often ask me whether this, something like postgraduate education, poses undue or perhaps unneeded cognitive strain. No; not really. I find there are generally sufficient automobiles about that you can frequently puzzle out which side of the road you're meant to be on, and unless you've driven from Britain to the continent, the side of the car in which you're sitting also provides handy, constant subrational reminder. What I find truly dangerous, though, is walking. Speaking here I hope without excessive anglocentrism, I discovered this morning in Bern I no longer possess any clue which direction cars will come at me from when I cross a street. To be truly honest, I would not be surprised if on closer inspection they proved on replay to come simultaneously from both, and several nonorthogonally intersecting planes besides. (Trams too; this is the Continent.) I find to some extent you can mitigate certain death and tertiodiurnal resurrection as road pizza by (a) inspecting frantically all directions of the sphere until on the other side, and safely back in euclidian space, or, (b) asking an elderly lady to walk you across the street. They have, through long decades of urban natural selection, developed keener abilities in this regard than the rest of us, like bats in caves with sonar. But really; do the healthy thing, do the socially responsible thing, do OxBlog a favour, because we care for you, our readers. Drive a combustion engine automobile whenever possible. Including, if possible, to the toilet.

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