Naughty RS driver ...

Almost all of the time, though, we know the law in general and follow it.  In most cases it's only a tiny fraction of the time that the breach is so outrageous or (on the other hand) the situation is so complicated that it becomes an issue.

As an analogy, in a regatta 50 boats may spend 5 hours each consciously and subconsciously following the rules; even if you don't consciously think about the rules, you won't tack onto port because a starboard tacker is on your hip. Out of that 250 hours of racing, maybe a total of 10 seconds will end up in the room.

I used to get rid of dodgy lawyers, and in that field of law there were tens of thousands of matters a year that went off perfectly well - yet that was never mentioned when tiny minority of dodgy cases hit the public eye.

As for the complexity of the laws, it's like our chats with the guys in the $500 development class on the Boat Design Forum - they don't understand why rules have to be so complex because they have not seen what happens to simple rules.

Although improving and simplifying the law is great, complication and disputes are just inevitable product of society, aren't they?

PS - I do agree that some of the guys in that stream of traffic may well have been assuming that they were being diverted by the police, and been unable to react in time when they saw that wasn't the case.  The bus driver, though....