when guardrails appear to move

[alpacinou]

Hello.

When you are driving fast in a highway and look at the guardrails, it looks as though they are moving past you too. How can I express that idea?

Does "flicker" work?

What do you think about this?

I was driving fast on the highway. The rain was pelting down and I could hear the swoosh of water on wet asphalt. Guardrails flickered past on my left side.

Are there other ways to express this?

 

[tedmc]

Something that shines unsteadily is said to flicker.

Perhaps " Endless stretch of guardrails zoom/race pass my left side."

 

[Tarheel]

Hello.

When you are driving fast in a highway and look at the guardrails, it looks as though they are moving past you t[STRIKE]too[/STRIKE]. How can I express that idea?

Does "flicker" work?

What do you think about this?

I was driving fast on the highway. The rain was pelting down and I could hear the swoosh of water on wet asphalt. Guardrails flickered past on my left side.

Are there other ways to express this?

The next thing that happens is you lose contact with the surface of the roadway and you hydroplane right off the road. ( Hopefully you will slow down before that happens.)

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

Hello.

When you are driving fast in a highway and look at the guardrails, it looks as though they are moving past you too. How can I express that idea?

Does "flicker" work?

Yes.

What do you think about this?

I was driving fast on the highway. The rain was pelting down and I could hear the swoosh of water on wet asphalt. Guardrails flickered past on my left side.

Are there other ways to express this?

Always!

Keep doing what you're doing: Build that vocabulary!

 

[alpacinou]

Keep doing what you're doing: Build that vocabulary!

Thank you Charlie. Just so I'm clear, is this completely okay?

I was driving fast on the highway. The rain was pelting down and I could hear the swoosh of water on wet asphalt. Guardrails flickered past on my left side.

 

[emsr2d2]

Something that shines unsteadily is said to flicker.

Perhaps "An endless stretch of guardrails zooms/races pass my left side."

If you use the singular "stretch", you must use the third person singular form of the following verb. You also omitted the article at the start, and you put a space after the opening quotation marks.
If you started with "Endless stretches", no article would be needed and "zoom/race" would be correct.

 

[Tarheel]

Thank you Charlie. Just so I'm clear, is this completely okay?

I was driving fast on the highway. The rain was pelting down and I could hear the swoosh of water on wet asphalt. Guardrails flickered past on my left side.

Yes, it's okay.

(In real life, of course, it's a bad idea to drive fast when it's wet and rainy.)

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

Thank you Charlie. Just so I'm clear, is this completely okay?

I was driving fast on the highway. The rain was pelting down and I could hear the swoosh of water on wet asphalt. Guardrails flickered past on my left side.

Good, except for the last four words. No one cares which side the guardrails were on. Just say they flickered past.

Exception:

If important things are happening on both sides, you might need to talk about left and right:

Guardrails flickered past on my left. On my right, the truck was edging toward me, intent on pushing my car through the rail. Enough. I groped under the seat for my Uzi. Lightning flashed, and up ahead, I could make out the road veering hard to the right. It was now or never. And never was approaching fast. It was a death sandwich, and I was the salami. . . .​

(Do you drive on the left in Iran? Since the rail is on the left, I assumed your luckless driver is driving on the left.)

 

[alpacinou]

Good, except for the last four words. No one cares which side the guardrails were on. Just say they flickered past.

Exception:

If important things are happening on both sides, you might need to talk about left and right:

Guardrails flickered past on my left. On my right, the truck was edging toward me, intent on pushing my car through the rail. Enough. I groped under the seat for my Uzi. Lightning flashed, and up ahead, I could make out the road veering hard to the right. It was now or never. And never was approaching fast. It was a death sandwich, and I was the salami. . . .​

(Do you drive on the left in Iran? Since the rail is on the left, I assumed your luckless driver is driving on the left.)

Thanks Charlie. We drive on the right in two-way streets. But on the highways, I usually drive on the left which is the speed lane.

I like your writing. Please write more in the forum.

 

[Tarheel]

Thanks Charlie. We drive on the right in two-way streets. But on the highways, I usually drive in the left lane, which is the speed lane.

I guess in that second sentence you are talking about divided highways.

I like your writing. Please write more in the forum.

Well, Charlie is smarter than me. ;-)

 

[tedmc]

Thanks Charlie. We drive on the right in two-way streets. But on the highways, I usually drive on the left which is the speed lane.

I like your writing. Please write more in the forum.

We call that the overtaking lane.

 

[emsr2d2]

In the UK, that's called the outside lane (the three lanes on a motorway are the inside lane, the middle lane and the outside lane). It used to be commonly referred to as the fast lane but that has fallen out of use somewhat, partly because it was seen to encourage people specifically to drive fast (potentially over the speed limit), rather than to use it only to overtake cars in the middle lane.

 

[Tdol]

How about flash by?

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

I just have more time to kill.