Static Hazards

A static hazard is already there and isn't moving: a junction, a bend, a crest, a narrow bridge, a speed bump, a pothole, a matatu stage, a school gate, a parked vehicle. You can see most of them coming from a long way off, and that is their value. A static hazard is a hazard you have time to plan for.

Reading them is mostly reading the road:

• Warning signs tell you what is ahead before you can see it. Warning and Regulatory Signs covered the vocabulary; this is where it pays off.
• The road's own shape tells you the rest. The handbook's advice for a bend without a sign is to read the trees, hedges, buildings and streetlights beside it. They show how sharply it turns before the tarmac does. Going uphill you see less of what is ahead, so a crest hides whatever is just beyond it.
• Places where people gather, such as stages, markets, schools and petrol-station entrances, are static hazards even when nobody is visible yet.

The trap with static hazards is that they feel safe because they are not moving. The most important thing about many of them is what they hide. The Swedish Theory Book makes the point about children: an adult can usually be spotted behind a parked car, but a child can be completely hidden by it. A parked matatu, a lorry at the roadside or a stall at the verge are each a static hazard with a possible developing hazard behind them.

So the response to a static hazard is set in advance. Choose the speed and the position that would let you deal with whatever it might be hiding, and choose them before you get there.