h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

How right you are.
Recent legislation made it illegal to use a handheld phone while driving, creating a soaring demand for all sorts of hands-free devices, but doing nothing to reduce the number of phone calls being made by drivers. And nobody really bothers with all the cables, ear plugs and mikes anyway.
One might also mention the fact that most drivers over here think it's perfectly alright to drive only inches behind the car in front of them, no matter how high the speed. As any whiplash victim will tell you, this is insane.

Norway has to be one of the worlds most dangerous countries on this planet to drive in, it is a complete free-for-all! The basic rules to follow when driving in Norway is that everyone else on the road drives as if they are the only car and they own the road.

First indications you may have of what is in store may be as you drive north in Germany. You may have cruised through the whole of the country enjoying the discipline and vigilance of your average Autobahn user but that all changes as you near the Danish border.

If you see a Norwegain registered car beware, it will pull in front of you with absolutely no warning, all Norwegain cars have their indicators removed before sale, and they will be travelling at dangerously slow speeds no matter which lane they are using.

Moving into Norway itself and lets look at country side driving.

Norway has the 2nd oldest car population in the developed world, there are a huge number of unroadworthy cars out there ready to kill you. Old, underpowered, black smoke spewing wrecks can be frustrating to drive, especially when the driver is stuck behind a truck and trailer that travels at 40kph uphill then speeds up just enough making it impossible to pass in the short pieces of road that do excist.

Eventually however the driver will try to overtake and you will meet them headon as they are halfway past the semi, no-one walks away from that senario.

Night time driving in the countryside can be equally entertaining with youths or older jocks drunk as skunks on moonshine blasting around almost out of control in the national car of Norway the BMW - watch yourself in Telemark!

Town driving amazing. Do not attempt to drive at peak time, you will crash. Norwegains start work at 0730-0800 and as a rule do not eat lunch, instead they have a few slices of bread. They then leave work starving at 1500-1530 and have no sense of humour at all!

If you must drive at these times avoid roundabouts, they have no rules except perhaps the oldest car wins.

When you crash the insurance companies have given up and just go 50-50. I suspect a very small percentage of Norwegains have ever been taught how to use a roundabout and everyone has a different version of the correct technique.

A typical roundabout senario goes something like this. You approach it and have three things to concentrate on.

1. The "normal" traffic you must give way to coming from your left.
2. The traffic joining the roundabout from your right, they do not stop but just drive on at full speed.
3. The people crossing in front of you whom you cannot see until they jump out from behind an obstruction and you must give way to.

This leaves you with a difficult choice, kill the pedestrian or concentrate on the traffic and avoid the crash.

The next problem is the right-hand-rule. It is a hangover from the days of horse and cart, remember when it was difficult to make a horse execute a right hand turn from a standing start so they made those going straight ahead give way to the right?

It only excists in built up areas and I challenge anyone out there to drive around and find a "situation" in an area you do not know then ask the Norwegain in the passenger seat what to do - they do not have a clue and it is their rule!!!

Imagine a busy crossroads where this rule applies, you can sell tickets and watch the comedy unfold. Again the whole issue is complicated by adding pedestrian crossing (4-off) right where the roads cross. If 4 cars meet each other they are taught to use courtesy to solve the problem but as I have already mentioned this does not excist at the busiest times so fury and wrecked cars are the result.

Just as a footnote Norway has a population of just over 4 million, they are 550 car crashes of various types every day.