Look at the following set of instructions, for example:
Can you imagine how long it will take me to figure out which vehicle is on the left and which is on the right? We will all grow old sitting there waiting for me to catch up.
Can I have that anti-autism pill now?
A rule you may prefer is what my driving instructor taught “Right of Way is not something you ‘get’, it’s something you ‘give.’” You can always wave for the other person to go first, or they’ll wave you to go, (or they’ll just go without waiting for a signal of any kind) and then you can just ignore which one of you is on the right.
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Aha, Ok, this helps. Thank you! Can you be my driving instructor? 🙂
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Kellen is right. In these painful intersection moments I always wave for the other person to go first. If s/he waves back and say go I go.
I have never been able to figure out completely the difference between left/right/behind/in front of. I have to think carefully before saying “in front of” or “to your left”. Carefully. To think about such a concept as a vehicle to my left, facing me, gives me a headache. It would be easier for me to say that such vehicle is at the northeast of me, or wherever it is using cardinal directions.
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My drivers ed teachers taught us that when 2 or more cars came to a 4-way stop at the same time, that the oldest and most beat up car went first. (seriously!)
I usually take Kellen’s approach. Or I draw a picture of it in my mind and go from there. My right side is the side with my watch, and the passenger side. That usually helps – I know I can look to my passenger’s side and follow around the circle that way.
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In this country, the right side of the car is the side where the front passenger seat is; the left side is where the door right beside the driver is.
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Ha, I can never tell what’s to the left or right of me, either.
Strangely, this trait seems to run in my family: my maternal grandmother also had it really bad, and my sister has it to a lesser degree than I do.
Neither of them is/was autistic. (I suppose it could be part of the Broader Autism Phenotype, but then it could also be a trait completely unrelated to autism that you and I just both happen to possess. I’m not aware of any studies on directional confusion in autism, though now I feel like I have to go and look for them.)
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(Whenever my grandmother would make a left/right mistake while driving, and her boss was in the car with her — which happened sometimes, apparently — he would always make some joke about “Polish lefts.” So that is what we call it in my family.)
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Have you reached the nightmare of traffic circles yet. We had a few of these in Miami, the city where I grew up and learned to drive (talk about trial by fire!), and they always made me into a nervous wreck.
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