During the past couple years I’ve had to do my share of driving in the Third World—Mexico, Lebanon, the Philippines, Cyprus, El Salvador, Africa, and Italy. (Italy is not technically part of the Third World, but no one has told the Italians.) I don’t pretend to be an expert, but I have been making notes. Maybe these notes will be useful to readers who are planning to do something stupid with their Hertz #1 Club cards.
What would be a road hazard anyplace else is, in the Third World, the road. There are two techniques for coping with this. One is to drive very fast so your wheels “get on top” of the ruts and your car sails over the ditches and gullies. Predictably, this will result in disaster. The other technique is to drive very slow. This will also result in disaster. No matter how slowly you drive into a ten-foot hole, you’re still going to get hurt. You’ll find the locals themselves can’t make up their minds. Either they drive at 2 mph—which they do every time there’s absolutely no way to get around them. Or else they drive at 100 mph—which they do coming right at you when you finally get a chance to pass the guy going 2 mph.
It’s important to have your facts straight before you begin piloting a car around an underdeveloped country. For instance, which side of the road do they drive on? This is easy. They drive on your side. That is, you can depend on it, any oncoming traffic will be coming straight at you on your side of the road. Also, how do you translate kilometers into miles? Most people don’t know this, but one kilometer = ten miles, exactly. True, a kilometer is only 62 percent of a mile, but, if something is one hundred kilometers away, read that as one thousand miles because the roads are 620 percent worse than anything you’ve ever seen. And when you see a 50 kph speed limit, you might as well figure that means 500 mph because nobody cares. The Third World does not have Broderick Crawford and the Highway Patrol. Outside the cities, it doesn’t have many police at all. Law enforcement is in the hands of the army. And soldiers, if they feel like it, will shoot you no matter what speed you’re going.
Most developing nations use international traffic symbols. Americans may find themselves perplexed by road signs that look like Boy Scout merit badges and by such things as an iguana silhouette with a red diagonal bar across it. Don’t worry, the natives don’t know what they mean, either. The natives do, however, have an elaborate set of signals used to convey information to the traffic around them. For example, if you’re trying to pass someone and he blinks his left turn signal, it means go ahead. Either that or it means a large truck is coming around the bend, and you’ll get killed if you try. You’ll find out in a moment.
Signaling is further complicated by festive decorations found on many vehicles. It can be hard to tell a hazard flasher from a string of Christmas-tree lights wrapped around the bumper, and brake lights can easily be confused with the dozen red Jesus statuettes and the ten stuffed animals with blinking eyes on the package shelf.
Dangerous curves are marked, at least in Christian lands, by white wooden crosses positioned to make the curves even more dangerous. These crosses are memorials to people who’ve died in traffic accidents, and they give a rough statistical indication of how much trouble you’re likely to have at that spot in the road. Thus, when you come through a curve in a full-power slide and are suddenly confronted with a veritable forest of crucifixes, you know you’re dead.
It’s important to understand that in the Third World most driving is done with the horn, or “Egyptian Brake Pedal,” as it is known. There is a precise and complicated etiquette of horn use. Honk your horn only under the following circumstances:
1. When anything blocks the road.
2. When anything doesn’t.
3. When anything might.
5. At green lights.
6. At all other times.
One thing you can count on in Third World countries is trouble. There’s always some uprising, coup, or Marxist insurrection going on, and this means military roadblocks. There are two kinds of military roadblocks, the kind where you slow down so they can look you over, and the kind where you come to a full stop so they can steal your luggage. The important thing is that you must never stop at the slow-down kind of roadblock. If you stop, they’ll think you’re a terrorist about to attack them, and they’ll shoot you. And you must always stop at the full-stop kind of roadblock. If you just slow down, they’ll think you’re a terrorist about to attack them, and they’ll shoot you. How do you tell the difference between the two kinds of roadblocks? You can’t.
(The terrorists, of course, have roadblocks of their own. They always make you stop. Sometimes with land mines.)
As a rule of thumb, you should slow down for donkeys, speed up for goats, and stop for cows. Donkeys will get out of your way eventually, and so will pedestrians. But never actually stop for either of them or they’ll take advantage, especially the pedestrians. If you stop in the middle of a crowd of Third World pedestrians, you’ll be there buying Chiclets and bogus antiquities for days.
Drive like hell through the goats. It’s almost impossible to hit a goat. On the other hand, it’s almost impossible not to hit a cow. Cows are immune to horn honking, shouting, swats with sticks, and taps on the hind quarters with the bumper. The only thing you can do to make a cow move is swerve to avoid it, which will make the cow move in front of you with lightning speed.
Actually, the most dangerous animals are the chickens. In the United States, when you see a ball roll into the street, you hit your brakes because you know the next thing you’ll see is a kid chasing it. In the Third World, it’s not balls the kids are chasing, but chickens. Are they practicing punt returns with a leghorn? Dribbling it? Playing stick-hen? I don’t know. But Third Worlders are remarkably fond of their chickens and, also, their children (population problems notwithstanding). If you hit one or both, they may survive. But you will not.
Never look where you’re going—you’ll only scare yourself. Nonetheless, try to avoid collisions. There are bound to be more people in that bus, truck, or even on that moped than there are in your car. At best you’ll be screamed deaf. And if the police do happen to be around, standard procedure is to throw everyone in jail regardless of fault. This is done to forestall blood feuds, which are popular in many of these places. Remember the American consul is very busy fretting about that Marxist insurrection, and it may be months before he comes to visit.
If you do have an accident, the only thing to do is go on the offensive. Throw big wads of American money at everyone and hope for the best.
One nice thing about the Third World, you don’t have to fasten your safety belt. (Or stop smoking. Or cut down on saturated fats.)
It cures a lot of worries about long-term consequences, being in a place where average life expectancy is forty-five minutes.