The big highways are the national highways, with country-wide names like N1, N2 and N7. Mostly these are two lanes, though none so far quite like "Bloody" US 27 in the Everglades. In some places near the cities they can be four line divided highways. While I say "two lanes" it's only in the legal sense. The can be 3 or even 4 lanes, depending on who is driving. There is a yellow line seperating the driving lanes from the break down lane / shoulder. Here it's often called "the yellow lane." Trucks will have signs on the back saying "this truck does not drive in the yellow lane" and "max speed 100" (that's kph). Don't believe either one.
Like elsewhere I've been you're not supposed to drive in the yellow lane. It's for breakdowns and doesn't have enough space for continuous safe driving. But here if someone comes up behind you and wants to pass you're supposed to slide over to the side - still going a highway speed - and let him by. Good manners require him to put his hazards on for a couple of blinks, to which you may respond with a flash of the head lights. It's a bit stressful trying to handle all this on a crowded highway at night in the mountains in near stop-and-go traffic while driving a left-handed stick. At least for me. I can't manage a conversation while doing all that.
It's also unnerving when there's traffic the other way, so cars might be lined up with two going one and one the other. There is enough space for two cars in the lane+yellow lane but with little room for error. In most cases the car going the other way goes partially into the other side's yellow lane to make things more comfortable.
Like Bloody 27 there is a high accident rate. On the drive to/from Durbin there were 3 or 4 accidents. One was with a minibus, another with a truck and a third with a car. There may have been another I don't recall. There were also a few broken down cars on the side of the road. Many people here regard the minibus taxis as very dangerous. Many people die in minibus collisions. They are independent contractors mostly going between a region of town with work and one of the poor residential areas. They speed and swerve and try to go as fast as they can, since they want to make a profit. There's usually one guy manning the door, using big gestures to tell other cars to make way, and call out after new riders.
The brother of Joyce, Heikki's and Minna's cleaning woman, died the weekend before last in a hit-and-run taxi accident.
There's a push to have higher safety standards on the taxis. There's pushback from the drivers who will protest if that happens.
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2 comments:
I'm amazed you are driving with a left handed stick! Do you miss your bike yet?
It took practice and I still have problems on a hill. The worst is parallel parking on a hill when the spot is on my immediate left. You would think by mirror symmetry that would be easier than on the right, but I've a lot more practice with the latter.
I drove stick for about two days total before coming here.
I do have problems still of being on the wrong side of the road, but it mostly occurs when there's no one else about as otherwise that gives me a big clue. Right turns still do throw me off. I must remember to make it wide.
When I came back to New Mexico last spring there were a couple of times when I drove on the wrong side in the US. 2.5 months here, 0.5 months in the UK, and no driving in Sweden did that.
Bike? The one I got while in high school? I got rid of that in '98 when I moved to New Mexico. It was getting broken down and was such that I didn't trust the frame.
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