An Old Rule of the Road

Notwithstanding the habits of the British, one of the oldest traffic rules is to drive one's car (or wagon or chariot) on the right-hand side of the road.  As a little boy, I knew and practiced it with my tricycle even before receiving my driver's license.

The town in Israel where I live has a little network of dedicated bicycle lanes, mostly (but not all) on sidewalks off the road from the traffic.  I was riding along one of them today, going at a healthy rate of speed, and saw another bicyclist coming towards me.  I slowed down and took pains to steer towards the right side of the bike path (which is about meters wide at where I was).  The other cyclist started to steer in front of me -- i.e., towards his left.

He continued to do so, and I had to quickly shift towards my left (i.e., his right) to avoid a collision.  We did avoid the collision, but we each had to momentarily stop.

Israel is a land where many languages are spoken on the street.  In my town there are groups of speakers of English, Russian, some German, a few Ethiopians, and a growing sector of French (including many from Montreal).    Like many visitors and recent arrivals, I am still brushing up on my Hebrew (and will likely start with an organized Hebrew language course, known as an "Ulpan," at some time in the next few weeks; details are in the works).  It is not uncommon to conflate words among the various languages, and that is what I did today.

The other bicyclist seemed clueless as to the old rule to keep toward one's right.  And I did detect an attitude during our very brief encounter, which could not have lasted more than 5 seconds in toto.  And I was not in the best of moods at the moment, never mind the other issues that were at hand.  The only words spoken were (1) the other cyclist's startled "Slikha!" {Hebrew equivalent of "Excuse me!}; and my disgusted admonition to him to stay on the right hand side.  The appropriate Hebrew would have been "L'Yamin!" {To the Right}, but the first words I grabbed from my linguistic armamentarium were not Hebrew, but were some of the scarce and sparse few Russian words I know, no doubt couched in suboptimal grammar and tense:  "Na Pravo, Eedeeot!"

He turned towards me.  Without specifically intending it, I apparently had spoken in his native language.