Road Rules

I believe after the month or so we have been here, we have come to understand the rules of the road down here.  At first glance, there doesn't appear to be any rules.  Oh sure, there are stop signs, stop lights and lines on the road, but none of these are really ever considered except at the main traffic circles.  All the cars have turn signals of course, but they are never used.  In their place, is the wave.  Basically, you just put your arm out of your window and wave.  That lets people know that you are just about to cut them off.  Notice I didn't say merge into their lane.  That doesn't happen here, you just cut people off, and they are cool with it.

There is a whole lot of honking going on, but if you are not on the side streets, it doesn't really mean anything.  On the side streets, it means "I am going way too fast and am approaching a blind side street, hope you hear me honking and stop before you plow into me".  At night, the same thing is done with flashing the high beams out of courtesy to those trying to sleep.

The first thing that you need to understand about the roads here is that the majority of people use the buses or taxis.  There are a ton of taxis.  I would estimate that probably 1/4 of the cars on the road here are taxis.  Of those, 95 percent of them are older Toyotas.  Most of the vehicles down here are Toyotas as a matter of fact.  You basically have the choice of a Toyota or a Volkswagon Beetle.  Anyways, back to the taxis.  The taxis are dirt cheap and drive like they are trying to win the Dakar rally.  To cross the city costs about $2.50 and you never need to phone a taxi company because there are always taxis driving by and you just wave or nod to get their attention.  Once in, buckle up if there are any seat belts, because its going to be a fun ride.

Remember I said that the lines and lights were purely decorative?  The taxis will place themselves on the white lines right between the lanes of traffic in order to be able to go in the faster of the two lanes when traffic starts moving or to be able to change lanes really quickly to go around other cars or the horse carts.  Sounds ok, but you need to remember that most of the streets are only 2 cars wide with no shoulders.  Many taxis are missing their mirrors or have them folded back because they were knocked off whizzing by other cars.  The second thing about the taxis is that they put opaque sun visors half way down their front window to stop the sun coming in so much.  It also stops you from seeing out the front window.  So now we have a speeding, swerving, blind taxi hurtling down narrow streets, usually without seatbelts.  Whhheeeeeeeee!!!!!! 

The strange thing is, I feel perfectly safe with them driving.  Everybody knows the signals, everybody knows they are going to be cut off, and everybody is ok with everybody else driving like idiots.  The crazy drivers are not the exception that cause the accident.  The cautious driver from out of country is the one who causes the accident because they stopped at the stop sign and got smacked from behind, or signaled and changed lanes without the hand wave, or followed the speed limit.

The other interesting thing is that no matter how many cars are in the road or around the traffic circle, it never grinds to a halt.  People will always move their cars in between tiny spaces that we would never try at home for fear of hitting each other.  We have moved through traffic here in 2 minutes that would have taken an hour back in Canada.  Why??? Because nobody is polite, everybody squeezes in the spaces and everybody knows everybody else is going to do the same.  There is no delay by waving people in and getting angry about the other guy who didn't let anybody in.

In short, its madness, but it works.  It might even work better than what we have at home.