I reckon the Defender fraternity is pretty good. I would get 9/10 waves....I feel really bad if am not concentrate and miss someone so apologies in advance if that happens :D
In general I lament the decline of acknowledging other vehicles in the bush and wrote a piece in 4WD Action mag a while back....
Save the Steering Wheel Salute
During our travels over the last couple of years, I have notice what I believe to be a significant decline in the great Aussie Steering Wheel Salute…the raising of the first finger from the steering wheel to acknowledge a fellow traveller going in the opposite direction.
To my generation…”old fart”…it has always been a common courtesy which probably began in my Dad’s day when they actually stopped and boiled the billy when meeting someone in remote areas.
It seems to me that you need to go a lot further west these days before it becomes common practice, which is a sad indictment on all of us sharing the nation’s roads.
On a recent trip we drove from Brisbane to Melbourne via the Newell Highway and I was getting RSI of the first finger for virtually zero return. I started to wonder if you needed to be further west. Our return trip took us via Wentworth, Wilcannia, Bourke, Walgett, Hebel and St George, but sadly I was faring no better. By the time we got to Roma and turned for home, I decided a poll was in order. I excluded trucks for the experiment, but gave significant salutes or in some cases, waves to the next 50 vehicles we passed. For my efforts I was acknowledged only 2 times!!!
What was interesting was that we were equally ignored by all road users. I was particularly surprised though that this included other 4WD’s, local farm vehicles and grey nomads in 4WD’s pulling caravans or camper trailers as I would have expected these groups to have maintained the simple, common courtesy.
It got to the stage where I was tempted to turn the 1st finger salute into a 2nd finger salute, but I figured that made me the same as them……but it was tempting!
I reckon this is a really crook state of affairs and we need to start a “Save the Steering Wheel Salute” campaign to try and make our highways a friendlier place again.
Cheers
:D:D
