Schooling designs our living pattern. We cannot easily quit things that were taught in schools.Things become much more complicated when the things taught in school prove to be wrong, and the complication further grows when the wrong things are accepted as right.

I still remember the book that taught me to always walk on the left side of the road, and I am pretty sure that most of us have learnt the same thing. But why should we walk on the left side of the road? Pedestrians in Nepal walk on the left side of the road, because we are taught to do so, but has any one of us given a thought about how appropriately our system has been working?

You walk on the left side of the road facing front. A driver in a vehicle comes from the back while you are facing front, you will have no idea what is coming from the back, and then you get hit by the vehicle.

All of us have been taught that the road accidents take place even when one is careful and the other person is careless. But do you agree? It is the rules that bind us to it.

The thing that is taught to us, ‘We should walk on the left side of the road’, is actually a copied statement from foreign stuffs. Call it a copied rule. In many countries the vehicles are supposed to move on the right side, and hence pedestrians walk on the left side.

Pedestrians will be facing the vehicles that come towards them and if any accident takes place both the vehicle drivers and pedestrians are to be blamed in most traffic mishaps. A pedestrian need not worry about being hit from the back because nothing will be coming from the back besides other pedestrians, and hence the pedestrians will be safer.

There are things that are taught to us with good intentions, but the rules can be made with mistakes. It can be a matter of controversy if the rules are changed, because once the rules are modified, people will have to bring change in their daily habit.

This is troublesome for the implementer as well as the local people. Now, if we have to blame anybody, obviously it is those who copied the rule from visits abroad without any rationale.

But it would be wise if the students in the lower levels of schools in this country are taught by explaining that foreigners walk on the left side because their vehicles have to move on the right side of the road, and we walk on the left despite the fact the vehicles are moving from the left side.