Driving in Bangkok - Part 1

Same question, every morning: Do we walk or do we take the car? We live close to the school, a pleasant twelve-minute walk. Although the school is less than 1 km from our home, the drive to school can sometimes take us 40 minutes, on a good day.  The drive to school necessitates that we take a main dual highway north, that is a main road where there is a cement divider strip that can’t be crossed. On these roads, there are U-turns every now and then, more often then than now. These turns never seem to be where you want them to be and sometimes you end up putting in a lot of extra mileage before being able to turn around to get where you want to go.

The first leg of our drive to school entails a 3 km stretch north in heavy morning traffic going into the city centre, eventually making a U turn to come back south for about 6 km, to then making another U turn to meet up again with heavy traffic heading north for another km before finally turning into the school parking lot. One would think that driving 10 k’s wouldn’t take 40 minutes…but it does in Bangkok.

Bangkok is known for its constant heavy traffic which is one of the worst things about this otherwise sweet city. A recent study has confirmed that the city has worse traffic jams than any other place in the world apart from Mexico City. Drivers in Bangkok spend on average 57 per cent extra travel time stuck in traffic at any time of the day.  At last count, the existing road systems can accommodate 1.5 million vehicles, while there are about 9 million registered vehicles. Bangkok wasn’t built for this many cars. It must also deal with the challenges of a major river and numerous small rivers that cause massive bottlenecks leading to the bridges to cross the river. There is also the challenge of the original roads and infrastructure, Bangkok was built long before there were thoughts and ideas of 10-lane superhighways. Add a population explosion that works and resides in central areas and an increase in affluence that results in more cars on the streets and you have gridlock. Rainy season?...well, this is where things really start getting interesting. Localized flooding due to the downpours is common during rainy season, adding flooded roads takes the traffic from gridlocked to parked. 
  
Having driven in many parts and countries of the world, including some in Africa and the Middle East with terrible driving habits, I have to admit, I rather enjoy driving in Bangkok. Perhaps that’s due to having driven in some of the worst places on earth, and once you’ve experienced the worst, anything else appears easy. Take that time a few years ago in Paris when I got stuck in that Arc de Triomphe multi laned roundabout, tilt-a-whirling our brand spanking new Westfalia van around all those crazy Parisian automobilists (enlève toué de mon chemin, maudit trou de cul!), attuned to the nerve racking melody of incessant honking from those crazy pipsqueak uptight tin-can-Renault driving Parisians, their constant tooting in concert with the wailing of our 2 year old daughter in the back seat demanding freedom from her car seat, while my customary cool, calm and collected spouse, Madeleine, on that particular day not at her best cool, calm, and collected usual self, but au contraire, her discomposure indicative of the sudden merger of her penchant for car sickness and the ramifications of that stale croque-monsieur which she wolfed down at breakfast at that inexpensive motel-6-kind-of-dive hotel we ended up staying at the night before, the poor woman frantically trying to unbuckle her seatbelt to settle down our screeching daughter, all the while upchucking her half-digested croque-monsieur on my brand spanking new high tech CR Grade neoprene seat covers of my brand spanking new Westfalia van. Yes, for some reason, I vaguely remember that particular episode of my personal international driving almanac. Not a pretty sight, it was. 

Nonetheless, I can say without a doubt that, when it comes to the worst of the worst of places where I have driven, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and especially the capital city of Riyadh, would win hands down. It was the hellish of all. Those who were there (as well as the poor souls who are still there) and have dared to get behind the wheel of a car will fully understand the sentiment behind this statement. Driving over there is nothing short than a blood sport, not an extreme sport, but a blood sport, without the desired adrenaline rush that the idiots who engage in those kinds of sport yearn for. The KSA ranks among the top countries in road fatalities, 27.4 per 100,000 inhabitants per year (compare that to Canada’s 6 per 100,000). 

So, what  makes driving in that giant sand box of a country so death defying? Well, first of all, there’s speed; the only possible position for the accelerator pedal is flat down. Add to that the fact that any signalling or indication seems to be deemed totally unnecessary. All lanes including the hard shoulder and some footpaths are used for overtaking, and there is no need to stick to one lane when 4 or more are available. If there’s a shorter route to where one would wish to go even if it means driving against oncoming traffic, it is taken. It is possible to levitate smaller vehicle out of your way by driving on their bumper and repeatedly flashing your lights and hitting your horn. A car flashing their lights as they approach a junction is not telling you to pull out, it means “get in my way and I will crush you.”  But, my favourite WTF driving moment (and let me tell you, there were a lot of WTF moments while I was in Saudi Arabia…come to think of it, my three years in Saudi Arabia were one big WTF moment!) that I’ve witnessed multiple times is, if the queue at the lights for turning left is too long, one would take any other shorter queue and turn across all other lanes. Oh yeah, and let's not forget, the kids driving. Women do not drive there; there is no official law that bans women from driving, but deeply held religious beliefs prohibit it, with Saudi clerics arguing that female drivers "undermine social values". Whatever. So what happens?... some women let 12 year old Mohammed at the wheel of the family BMW, and, well, you get the picture.

           

On the other hand, looking on the bright side because there is always a bright side to everything, my experience driving in Saudi Arabia has really honed up my defensive driving skills, not to mention giving me the almost exclusive bragging rights of having survived the Saudi motorist aberration and still be able to talk about it today without too much PTSD fallout. Again, I digress...back to driving in Bangkok.

Next entry : Driving in Bangkok, Part 2