Are the days of gentlemen on the street over?
Giving way to someone turning in with a hand signal, waving a pedestrian across the crosswalk in a friendly manner, allowing a driver on the right to move into the overtaking lane of the freeway unhindered - decades ago, these were all completely normal maneuvers for the gentleman on four wheels. Advertising campaigns for road safety motivated drivers to give a friendly hand signal, and it was considered noble to give or let others have a free ride.
People on the road today feel less and less of this. However, this is not due to drivers alone, but also to traffic density and technology, as well as the legal framework and its enforcement. If more and more vehicles want to drive on the same number of roads, things get tight. Giving way in traffic automatically leads to delays that can no longer be made up.
Cars are increasingly controlled by electronics and not by the driver. Cruise control is set to a constant 125 km/h in the 120 km/h zone, leaving little room for friendly lane-keeping. On the contrary, overtaking maneuvers sometimes drag on indefinitely because the driver on the left is driving almost three km/h faster than the one on the right, and thanks to the electronics, this is constant, blocking the left lane of the expressway.
Accelerating in the overtaking lane so that the car on the right can change lanes is also no longer an option, because with today's density of radar systems, the gentleman with a flashing light is bought off, and friendliness can quickly cost money.
The voluntary stop at the pedestrian crossing with a friendly wave to the waiting pedestrian is also passé (in Switzerland at least), because with the pedestrian's right of way enshrined in law, they no longer wait at the side of the road, but simply walk along, regardless of whether they are forcing the only car for miles around to slow down or whether they could make their contribution to evenly flowing and economical traffic by waiting a little.
So there are many reasons for the disappearance of the gentleman in road traffic, after all, the friendly hand signal and the courteous braking maneuver are not forbidden, and as a daily road user you are happy when there are still people who think along with you when driving and help to keep the traffic flow going ...
