{"id":6189,"date":"2015-09-28T07:02:37","date_gmt":"2015-09-27T21:02:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.privatefleet.com.au\/?p=6189"},"modified":"2023-08-17T23:10:08","modified_gmt":"2023-08-17T13:10:08","slug":"funeral-cortege-etiquette-follow-that-hearse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/driving\/funeral-cortege-etiquette-follow-that-hearse\/","title":{"rendered":"Funeral Cortege Etiquette: Follow That Hearse"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"hearse1\"<\/a>Nobody likes going to funerals.  For a start off, you\u2019re dealing with having lost someone you knew, or you\u2019re there to support a friend who\u2019s lost someone. Then you have to dress up in smart, dark clothing, head off to a church or chapel that you may not be familiar with, sit on uncomfortable seats and hope like mad that half a billion relatives don\u2019t stand up and give interminable eulogies. Then you\u2019ve got the trip to the graveside, following the hearse.<\/p>\n

This procession of cars behind a hearse going from the church\/mosque\/chapel\/synagogue\/other significant ceremonial place is known as a cortege. Or cort\u00e8ge if you want the fancy French spelling.  This is supposed to be a stately procession. The idea here is that the hearse leads the way, usually taking the minister\/priest\/rabbi and the coffin.  The chief mourners (i.e. immediate family) will come next in the procession. To take part in the cortege, set out from the chapel or wherever the funeral was held and follow the hearse. Don\u2019t dawdle.<\/p>\n

When you are driving in the cortege, you get to have your headlights on dip during the day (here\u2019s where you hope you can override those automatically dipping headlights). Also don\u2019t forget to turn your headlights off when you get to the cemetery or everybody will get a flat battery. Don\u2019t overtake other people in the procession and let the hearse set the pace.<\/p>\n

Well, in most situations, you let the hearse set the pace. At my father-in-law\u2019s funeral, we (a) had quite a long way to go to get to the cemetery, (b) had a hearse with a fairly powerful engine and (c) had a petrol-head vicar who might have been egging the hearse driver on.  I don\u2019t know how fast that hearse was going, but my husband didn\u2019t half have to plant the boot in the Ford Fairmont <\/a> we had back then to keep up with the hearse.  Other family members struggled to keep up the pace and one bunch of my in-laws who had a less zesty Honda Odyssey MPV <\/a> were Not Impressed.  It would have been a traffic cop\u2019s dream situation: a whole line of people all over the speed limit, quota of speeding tickets filled in one day and a great story about I Clocked A Hearse Doing 120+ To The Cemetery.<\/p>\n

What if you are not part of the funeral procession? What\u2019s the best thing to do when you see a long line of cars with their headlights on dip containing drivers in dark suits following a hearse? These days, you probably need to check to make sure that it isn\u2019t just a bunch of car-pooling businesspeople with daytime running lights, but usually the presence of a hearse, children in the car and several cars that are too old to have daytime running lights are a bit of a giveaway.<\/p>\n

What you may not know if you see a funeral procession is that you have to give way to it. This means all the cars in the procession. In New South Wales, it\u2019s actually against the law to break into the funeral procession, cut in or otherwise interfere with the smooth process of getting mourners to the graveside on time for the final part of saying goodbye. Even if it wasn\u2019t the law, it\u2019s common decency and respect for others.<\/p>\n

You can see why if you can imagine the same situation taking place on foot. If you saw the minister and the pallbearers carrying the coffin on foot along a walkway, followed by black-clad grieving relatives wielding tissues, you wouldn\u2019t overtake them and get into the procession if you were approaching from the rear. (In other words, overtaking Cousin Hannah with all the kids in tow so you walk between her and Cousin Jeff before overtaking Cousin Jeff and Uncle Timothy\u2026) If you were approaching them at right angles, you wouldn\u2019t barge straight on through them, getting in the way.  The same rules of courtesy apply when you are in a car rather than on foot. Dipped headlights are the motoring equivalent of black clothes, tissues and flags at half-mast. Respect them.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, a number of people have reported rude drivers cutting in to funeral processions, either by not giving way to them or by overtaking and interrupting the procession. Obviously, traffic lights don\u2019t count (if the hearse driver has any sense, he\/she will drop the speed so other members of the procession can keep up and not get lost.).<\/p>\n

If you do lose sight of the rest of the cortege, your phone will come in handy (hands-free if you\u2019re the driver).  Cemeteries are usually located outside central business areas and may involve obscure suburban streets.  Having another relative with the phone on in other cars will help if you do get lost or separated from the rest of the procession. Just don\u2019t forget to turn it off when you get to the cemetery.<\/p>\n

If you are not part of the procession, then give way. Pull over and let them pass you if you accidentally find yourself in the middle of a cortege.  Yes, it\u2019s inconvenient and you don\u2019t want to. However, the people in the procession don\u2019t want to be there either and they\u2019re going through a lot more inconvenience than you. If you\u2019re late for a meeting, your clients\/boss\/co-workers understand (even if it\u2019s a job interview, this might earn you points for courtesy).  Or go around another way if you\u2019re really in a hurry.  Yes, life is busy these days.  But it\u2019s not so busy that you can\u2019t be respectful of other people\u2019s feelings and show some respect.<\/p>\n

Have other people had experiences with funeral processions that were interrupted by rude drivers cutting in?  Or any other examples of a cortege that didn\u2019t quite go according to the textbook plan?  Share your stories here.<\/p>\n

Safe and happy driving,<\/p>\n

Megan http:\/\/credit-n.ru\/offers-zaim\/moneyman-srochnye-zaimy-online.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nobody likes going to funerals.  For a start off, you\u2019re dealing with having lost someone you knew, or you\u2019re there to support a friend who\u2019s lost someone. Then you have to dress up in smart, dark clothing, head off to a church or chapel that you may not be familiar with, sit on uncomfortable seats […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-driving"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6189"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14815,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6189\/revisions\/14815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}