Shoes Repair

rich people drive like maniacs because money will solve their problems. poor people drive like maniacs because they have nothing to lose.

in both houston and austin, we always noticed the worst, most inconsiderate drivers have the most expensive cars and were in the most expensive neighborhoods. maybe the shopping bags are under their feet in the floorboard, maybe the tiny cell phones are too hard to handle.

there is a difference between “super duper rich” and “kind of rich”. kind of rich people have something to prove — they hold the small bit of money they have over the heads of everyone else. i call it the lexus syndrome. if you run into a bad driver (har), they are probably driving a lexus. lexus owners have just enough money to flaunt, but not enough money to be secure with their egos.

Dan, the problem with a majority of drivers in fast-developing countries is that their average experience behind the wheel is negligible. Most of them got rich enough to afford a car only very recently. Instead of a leisurely gradual learning afforded by typical US traffic they are having a crash course in urban survival, endangering themselves and others.

The professional drivers are completely different species. I live in Moscow, Russia. The infrastructure of the city was designed to cope with 800000 cars maximum. Now there are close to 4 million of them, and traffic is hell. The company I worked for used former ambulance drivers, and their utter calm, quickness and smoothness never ceased to amaze me.

Alexei, I’m not sure about third world drivers being “unskilled”. In China and Hong Kong I rode with people who spent a good part of their day driving people who worked for our various companies around. They had incredible reflexes and amazing judgement that I can only attribute to lots and lots of practice and staying current. The main reason it was scary (besides the potential of actually using airbags) was simply that my wussy western U.S. responses weren’t honed to take in that many objects at that many relative velocities in that small a space. The point isn’t necessarily that they’re worse drivers, they may actually be better drivers, they’re just pushing the limits much harder.

Phil, what about Italy? Is there a huge wealth gap there too?

Quite frankly, you are seeing the idiocy of Massholes and extrapolating to the country at large. Here in PA we have to watch out for 78-year-olds in Buicks and 19-year-olds in beatup Ford pickups, but that is about it. Could be population density, could be residual Teutonic “ordnung”.

> I live in San Francisco and I have never seen a city where drivers run red lights as casually as here.

Fazal, go to Italy, Naples area. If you’re driving, at night it is downright dangerous to stop at red lights there. You might be rear-ended by a commuter bus or garbage collection truck. Passenger car drivers usually take an effort to swerve around you at the last possible second, though…

I don’t buy this “western US drivers are more considerate” theory. I live in San Francisco and I have never seen a city where drivers run red lights as casually as here. Just this morning, I was almost struck by a taxi that ran a red light a full second after it turned red.

There is definitely a divide between East Coast and West Coast cities as others have mentioned. Not sure its a economic thing, my impression is that the “respect” that West Coast drivers show for pedestrians really stems from fear. They aren’t used to encountering people on the street and get nervous about hitting them. Drivers in NYC or Boston are accustomed to pedestrians and are more concerned with getting to their destination in time. And yeah the SUV really does make people more aggressive, less oxygen in the air up there or something… Having AC, a nice stereo and a sound proof luxury car probably makes people less concerned about those on the sidewalk as well…

If you want to see crazy driving try Montreal. I was driving in a FUNERAL PROCESSION and we could not keep up with the cars or the hearse in front of us. What’s the bloody hurry to get to a cemetary? I felt like I was driving in the Mortuary 500. There were a lot of
“out of towners” who were driving and yet they still took us on many different freeways and through parts of town where we had no idea where we were going.
In Toronto atleast, you have a police ecort, there’s a “Funera”l sign on your car, you drive slow and you have your flashers on because you’re allowed to run red lights. I’m pretty sure my Montreal relative was laughing hysterically if she was watching from “upstairs”.

In the third world countries I’ve been to I’ve been pretty impressed with the skill and patience of everyone on the road. In Nepal for instance, waterbuffalo, motorcycles (and every permutation thereof), bikes, dogs, and people (of all ages, limb number, and dexterity), all swarm the roads. The roads are often washed out or unpaved, and navigation is undertaken without the benefit of signs, lights, paved roads, retaining barriers, medians, turn signals, or drivers-ed.

Many of the trucks bear the sign “Horn Please”, and having traveled as a bicyclist, vehicle rider and walker, I can attest to both the prominence and effectiveness of this navigation tool. It’s a great warning device really, a truck will beep his horn before passing a bicyclist, for instance, which is good, because as a rider the noise and the dust and the goings on, dulls the sensory mechanisms you depend on for safety. I’ve experienced the same in other countries, where whatever vehicle (boat, jeeplike thing, bus) is available is often a “classic” vintage, and break-downs occur frequently due to building-sized pot-holes, boulders, and various road or river aberrations. Drivers are often committed to replace engines, axels and whatever else. In one case a boat helmsman stripped to his underwear and fixed a shorn off propeller with an impressive repertoire of scuba diving/mechanical skills.

Albeit it’s NOT to say limbs and lives aren’t lost, (and most traveling deaths are due to car accidents), but I imagine all this breakage (which extends to the rest of life) can foster a certain patience. South America and Africa drivers were a bit less dependable, but all and all I think they take care of their passengers and I generally felt no less safe, aside from the lack of seatbelts, then I do in the US.

In Seattle we have 4 way stops, so whoever gets to the intersection first gets to go. If its a 6 way intersection you have to be on your toes to keep track of whose turn it is (helps to have a passenger). When I first moved here from Boston, where this system would lead to complete anarchy, I was amazed at the politeness of it all. If two vehicles arrived to the intersection at the same time, one driver would wave to the car across the intersection, “you go”, then they would wave back; “No, you go”. It’s a bit off-putting, you may think everyone’s all nicey-nicey here but it belies a sort of community-wide passive agressive streak. I’m not advocating this traffic mechanism for efficiency, though I do think 4 way stops are slightly more civilized then the rotaries.