A thoughtful consideration of this question in its entirety will help lead one to a fairly obvious response. We tend to think that others can make allowances for our shortcomings – and they generally do.
As I mentioned, take this question as an illustrative example. Posters on Fluther are generally requested to write a short “topic question” and then to flesh out the question with details (to avoid potential misunderstanding, to lead respondents to the specific question that the writer had in mind, and to add necessary particulars to aid in forming a response), yet you simply added details “None needed” (I’m not singling you out; you’re not the only one to add “detail” such as “as asked” or other non-detail) – and here are several on-topic responses already who have made allowance for the ‘shortcoming’ of your question. You haven’t followed the rules of the road of Fluther … and yet, here you are still on the road, so to speak.
It works that way with driving, too, as with nearly everything else in life. We figure that people can make allowances and will make allowances, and they generally do.
I’m not holding myself up as any paragon. I have my own faults and failings – as we all do – but mine are generally not in the driving arena. (Sometimes they are; I can also drive distracted, overtired, angry or upset at something unrelated to the driving, or upset at what I consider to be bad acts by other drivers, too fast or too slow, confused about where I am or where I should be, too fast because too late because too lazy to leave on time, impatient, etc. Still, I haven’t had an accident of any kind in decades, because my mistakes aren’t generally unrecoverable – and because other drivers have also made allowances for my occasional poor driving from time to time.)
So if we’re mindful of these things, then we try to improve our own watchfulness and skills, learn from our own and others’ mistakes, expect that others will still make mistakes and bad decisions, and make those allowances ourselves when we can. And then come on Fluther to bitch about it. It’s what we’re here for.
You could see the same thing in 99 out of 100 text messages (not while driving, obviously) in which users who have presumably had at least marginally successful high school educations cannot or will not spell out even two words in ten, use no punctuation and use the lamest of sentence construction … and yet find that their own respondents have a generally good understanding of what was meant. You can see it everywhere, but driving and text messages are pretty universal among North American adults these days.
People are sloppy and careless, in other words, because they can get away with it. Let’s talk about restaurant kitchens next, and see what details are flushed out (so to speak) in that discussion.
