Traffic hijinks

Remember I said a few weeks ago that people have a nasty habit of going the wrong way down the one-way slip road so they get to westbound Janzour Rd five seconds faster than going to the lights and doing a u-turn? Here’s what happens when five or six cars do it at the same time (I’m waiting to make a left-hand turn into the slip road – you know, to actually use it the way it was intended to be used…)

Digression: In the background, you can see a pile of bricks; we used to wonder why there was always so much building material at our dirt-track intersection. We thought it was some kind of central depot for delivery and pick-up – no, it’s where they sit all day and make the bricks. Check out the electrical wiring job in that second photo, too.

Driving is, to say the least, exhilarating here. There’s nothing that livens up your day like having to simultaneously slam your brakes on because you’re coming up at 100km an hour towards a guy who has just stopped his car on the motorway to chat to his mate on the side of the road, and also not slam your brakes on too hard because the guy behind you is driving at 110km an hour an inch from your bumper.

Especially at roundabouts (there’s two roundabouts here christened Roundabouts of Death by expats – which doesn’t make giving directions any easier…), driving is a matter of being aggressively assertive. In fact, if you don’t make left hand turns in tiny gaps, pull out in front of people, push your way in, cut across lanes etc, you can cause extra havoc because you’re behaving in an unexpected way.

The biggest trouble I’ve had (aside from the frigging manhole covers – we’re supposed to get in the habit of not driving over them in case one day the cover flips up and takes out the bottom of the car or is missing completely, except I manage to hit the damn things Every. Single. Time. And aside from the speeds on the motorway, and getting lost, and sitting too far right…one of the biggest troubles, then) is in indicating to show that I’m pulling over to the side of the road (to go to the grocery store or vegie stall, wherever). When I do this, I get beeped, and in the ‘idiot’ way, not the ‘don’t pull out I’m coming past’ way. Whereas if I just pull over without giving any notice of intention, it doesn’t seem to bother anyone. So I don’t know what that’s about.


Back to the photos. Here’s an example of a light-on traffic jam. Note how two lanes are indicated by the lane markings, but one car has decided it’s wide enough for three lanes. In heavy traffic, everyone’s gone to three lanes, and some people try for four.

And this is the reason for the traffic jam – the bakery to the lefthand side of the photo. Like I said, this is a light-on jam (it’s a Saturday, like the Western Sunday), caused by people having to reverse out into traffic after getting their bread. On the bad days, or good days for the bakery, people just start parking in the right-hand lane(s), and there’s white-uniformed police officers directing traffic (ie telling the traffic to keep doing exactly what’s it doing). All I can say is, that better be the best bread for 50 km, people.