Thursday, July 27, 2006

Fearing for my life while in the car

Many of you know me. I’m not a scared driver. In Colorado I pretty much drove wherever I wanted as fast as I wanted no matter who was in front of or behind me. Middle of the day, I’m doing 80 on the highways, 60 on the side roads. I never ever stop at stoplights unless a cop is in sight. I go through red lights all the time, as long as no one is there. I follow close and if you don’t move out of my left lane, I’m passing on the right and cutting you off as I get back into the left. I even passed on I70 going up the hill at Georgetown on the barely-there shoulder thanks to some lame slow driver. None of this is a big deal to me.

Throughout New Zealand and especially now in Nelson, every time I get in the car to drive or as a passenger, I fear for my life. I can’t put my finger on it exactly, but regardless of the age of the drivers on the road, they all drive freaking crazy and I can’t be on enough alert, even when walking too, for that matter.

Now I have to tell you that we belonged to a listserv with other expatriates living in New Zealand and about a month before we left, the topic of driving came up for discussion. We read with interest as men and women alike bitched about Kiwi drivers and how awful they are. Laughable. Don even chimed in about drivers in Italy and Europe, how freaking bad can relaxed, laid back, low-stress Kiwis be?

They are f**king awful. The other-side-of-the-road thing is not the issue, nearly all of the rules for driving are the same, just on the opposite side. The one major difference—and for sake of ease I will describe as if I was driving in the States on the right side of the road—is when you are making a right-hand turn, YOU have to give way to all persons turning left. Think about it for a second, normally when you turn right, you don’t stop, you kinda yield. Now imagine while you are doing that someone in the left hand turn lane just speeds up and makes the turn to avoid the oncoming traffic, just as you are trying to turn, nearly hitting you in the process.

You might be saying, well, if you would just STOP like you are supposed to before you make that right-hand turn, Angela, you won’t die, you freak. And I say to you, NO ONE HERE STOPS, there are no stop signs, there are only yield signs. It is not the law to make full, complete stops, the laws are for yields. So someone comes up to the end of the road, or the end of a driveway, and wants to turn right, they don’t stop and then look. They pull halfway out to the road, because for all intents and purposes they know they can just pull out onto the road, and only stop if they see you coming up to them—more like slam on their brakes when they see you coming. So every time you are driving down the road, at every street, people pull out and it feels like they all are driving right into you and you’re constantly hitting the brakes.

The best part about driving is few, if any, stop signs. All roundabouts, how sensible!! Until you realize that everyone is going around the roundabout to the right . . . and so you are back at square one, see previous paragraph.

Needless to say, I have made more hard stops here than I ever did my entire life driving in the US. To what can I attribute this odd difference in driving styles? I’ve thought about this and I think it is that no one is taught to drive defensively here, everyone is taught to drive offensively—basically, taught to drive like Angela. So when everyone in the country is an Angela, and then Angela moves there, Angela becomes Beatrix and ages 50 years behind the wheel. At least Beatrix is still alive, but one never knows what will happen tomorrow.

1 Comments:

At Fri Jul 28, 04:49:00 am NZST, Anonymous Anonymous said...

This sounds like a real adventure. Hopefully, you both will have mastered the situation in the car before your bikes arrive and you try to negotiate on the roads with two wheels and no body armor. Love, Dad & Mom

 

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