Subj : word
To   : Alexander Koryagin
From : Ardith Hinton
Date : Mon Nov 30 2020 23:56:11

Hi, Alexander!  Recently you wrote in a message to Ardith Hinton:

 AH>  When it really mattered which side of a horse a knight
 AH>  mounted on & what the chances were of meeting up with
 AH>  an enemy who was approaching from the opposite direction,
 AH>  it made sense to keep to the left.

 AK>  I also want to note, that women also were road traffic
 AK>  participants, and during those times they sat on their
 AK>  horses sidelong with their both legs hung on the left
 AK>  side of horse.


           Yes... we call it "riding sidesaddle".  Years ago I saw a picture of Queen Elizabeth II mounted that way on a formal occasion when she was wearing a full-length skirt.  In less formal situations she & other female members of the royal family evidently wear jodhpurs (riding breeches).  Until the 20th century it would have been unthinkable, however, for a female to wear trousers....  :-)



 AK>  So, if the traffic on roads had been right-sided women
 AK>  could have gone under the horse approaching from the
 AK>  opposite direction, in case they fell from their own
 AK>  horses. It case of left-side movement they could get
 AK>  safely into the road ditch, the worst scenario. ;-)


           Good point.  I am told right-handed people generally prefer to mount from the left & horses generally learn to expect that.  It would be safer, both for males & females, to mount/dismount at the edge of the road than to walk out into the traffic... and when we were in England I didn't see wide, deep ditches like some of the ones I've noticed in rural areas around here.  On flood plains & river deltas these may be filled with stagnant water more often than not.

           At any rate, the thought has occurred to me too that a person who is riding sidesaddle may be in great danger of falling... [chuckle].



 AK>  So, returning to our horses, the women used to dismount
 AK>  from both horses and carriages from the left -- and a
 AK>  universal rule, as we know, is a good and easy rule.


           I hadn't thought about carriages, but I get the drift.  :-)



 AK>  You should not rake your brains and think which variant
 AK>  is better. That's why they still follow the rule in
 AK>  England. ;-)


           Dallas has driven in England with me as a passenger & navigator.  We both thought the roundabouts there were a great idea because they don't take up a lot of space... and if you're not sure which exit to use you can drive around in circles until you've figured it out.  On North American freeways you may not get a second chance to read the signage, and if you take the wrong exit you can easily waste half an hour getting to wherever you should have been.

           Why don't we use roundabouts here?  Theoretically they ought to work if all the directions are reversed... but, as often happens when somebody comes up with what they consider to be an improvement on the traditional way of doing things, a few details were overlooked.  We've kept the rule that the vehicle on the right has "right of way" although we drive on the opposite side of the road
.... and usually we make it work.  But in some intersections it doesn't....  :-)



 AH>  Meanwhile, folks here in BC drove on the left until
 AH>  it became problematic that our neighbours to the south
 AH>  didn't.  Not all provinces changed at the same time...
 AH>  but BC did it about a century ago.

 AK>  It's interesting to look at how the road with left-driving
 AK>  rules is passing into the right-driving road, especially
 AK>  if the road have a good traffic. ;-)


           Yes, I reckon it must have been quite a challenge to switch from one to the other upon crossing the border.  I don't know how it was done, but I see that as the population increases the volume of traffic increases as well.  :-))




--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+
 * Origin: Wits' End, Vancouver CANADA (1:153/716)

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