August 24, 2009
-
Driving in Puerto Rico
In many ways being in Puerto Rico is just like being in America, but in Spanish. Driving, however, is not one of them. When it comes to behavior on the road, Puerto Rico is much closer to the third world.
Red lights are mere stop signs. Running the red is so common because apparently there is no prohibition against it. At least, the other day I saw four cars run a red light right in front of a police car without any repercussions. In and of itself, this would not be amazing, I suppose. What does amaze me is when I see people make a right turn from the left turn lane, across two lanes of traffic while running a red light. Or a right turn from the left lane across two lanes of traffic. It’s not an uncommon occurrence.
You have to push yourself in to make turns a lot of places because there’s tons of traffic, especially when getting out of parking spaces (unless you just park in the middle of the road and block traffic.) For some reason this pushing out makes certain persons extremely irate, which is completely incomprehensible to me as it’s just such a common occurrence. But they’ll be flipping people off for doing what everyone does, and what everyone has to do in order to keep moving.
The roads are terrible and full of potholes. In many places the markings have been obliterated. There are storm drains which are set very low. This all has the very welcome effect of at least keeping people from driving too fast.
So far, wherever I’ve had to drive, there is actually enough room for two cars to pass each other on the road. And they drive on the right side of the road. After two years of not driving much at all I am so thrilled to be mobile once again, who cares what the driving is like!
Comments (5)
So, it’s like driving in Boston after a Red Sox game?
…If Fenway were in Rhode Island and none of the roads had street signs.
and the traffic lights only worked half the time…
I agree with your comments except that you ommitted the fact that the highways are fine and your exageration about the lights. The lights work 95% time. People have to understand that when it rains here, it rains really hard and it can temporarily knock out the power. In Ireland when this happens the roads are totally flooded and many are impassable. Here the drainage system does a good job. But you have to take your time when going over these drains if you would like to keep the suspension on your car. Back to the lights, people will make a left at a red light but they very rarely go straight through a red light with the exception of the few seconds after it has just turned. It reminds me of driving in NYC. Nobody speaks English there either.
Whoa, that is very interesting. I like hearing about what life is like over there. So different. It does make me grateful for the roads here, even though I still flinch when a truck passes as the lanes are so much narrower than in America.
I’m glad you have the freedom of driving!!