Let me start out by saying that I drove for 4 years as a courier in Atlanta, Georgia, while in college. I racked up over 320,000 miles during that time. I am not a timid driver. I am king of holding my lane. If you try to bully in, I will let you hit me. I am safe, but I will not back down from rude drivers.
Drivers in Puerto Rico scared me. They are nuts! Puerto Rico is 100 miles by 30 miles in size. There are about 3 million people there. There are 1.5 million cars. They pack the roads. The roads are all narrow, and mostly in bad shape.
My first sight of seeing Puerto Rican drivers was in the Dollar rent-a-car van leaving the airport. Interstate 26 is three lanes in each direction. There is no inside shoulder or emergency lane. There is a slim emergency lane and shoulder on the right. There are many entrance and exit ramps. Outside of the shoulder and ramps are cement walls. I was shocked to see basically 5 lanes of traffic fighting down this road. When the cement wall intruded near ramps, two lanes would sort of merge and then split back up. If you did not fight for that merge, you would sit and not move. As our van driver surged up and down the shoulder and ramps, I could not believe the mess I saw.
When I picked up the rent-a-car, I drove onto 26 and east. Traffic moves at the speed limit or below. I saw very little speeding. Almost immediately we hit a traffic jam. We sat for long periods of time. Whenever a lane moved, everybody would try to bully into that lane. If you did not bully, you did not get into a new lane. I opted to stay in actual lanes, nut many used the right shoulder. Actually so many people were driving on the shoulder, that it moved no faster than the actual lanes. After 40 minutes we finally got to the obstruction that screwed up the traffic. A car had stalled. Since there is no shoulder or median, the car just sat in a lane.
In Puerto Rico the fine for driving on the sidewalk is $125. From I heard, they issue those tickets frequently. I did not hear about any fine for driving on the shoulder or median. That does not mean it is not on the books.
What I noticed after the aggressive driving practices was that most drivers in Puerto Rico will turn from any lane in any direction. I lost counts of how many times I saw cars just turn left from the right hand lane, and right from the left. Watching a few lanes of cars take off from a red light is similar to watching a hockey game.
In Atlanta people will drive up one lane leading a red light, only to jump to another so that they can avoid waiting in line. In Puerto Rico They will drive up the shoulder or median trying to time the light to get a jump on all the traffic that is stopped. I found this most prevalent on Highway 3. I saw many do this at the speed limit. While very unsafe, it is fairly amazing to see. When 4 or 5 do it at once it is quite a show. Combine that with turning from any lane, and you can visualize the hockey game, I hope.
In Puerto Rico it is legal to run red lights from midnight to 5 o'clock in the morning. Seems they have a little car jack problem. The routine is to slow down and if the intersection is clear, speed through the light. I did see people on the median of many intersections. They appeared to be begging, hustling (male prostitutes), or soliciting tricks (female prostitutes). I could see how you would not want to stop at night.
Puerto Ricans will park anywhere. Sidewalks will be used first. Then they will just park on the street. Two lane, busy roads will end up with one lane in the middle snaking between parked cars on both sides. It seems that he who gets there first has the right of way. Imagine 1.5 million UPS and FedEx trucks parking wherever they need to make a delivery. There are so many cars on sidewalks that you end up walking down the street. Old San Juan looks like one huge parking lot. People will use one lane in each direction to vertical park during the day. If the road is very narrow, then they only parallel park.
Driving to the Areciba Radio Telescope one afternoon I saw a traffic jam due to construction. We must have just missed it going back. Traffic in the two lanes going through the work was backup up for over 5 miles. For these 5 miles traffic had formed one lane on the median (rare in PR) and one on the right shoulder. A fifth lane was forming outside the lane on the median. After a few miles of driving the other direction, we came into a small back up. A police car had blocked our left lane so that some of the people going into the huge traffic jam could u-turn and head back the other way. While very few people were choosing to do this, the officer seemed to feel it was necessary to block one of our lanes with his car continually. I hate to imagine how bad the traffic jam going our way became. I felt lucky to get through it all when we did.
On the way to the radio telescope we got to see some thin, curvy, mountain roads in the center of the island. These roads gained and lost altitude quickly. They turned sharply and often. While they were not heavily traveled, you would often meet traffic coming the other way unexpectedly. Both cars would veer into the grass, pass each other, and then continue like nothing had happened. I kept having flashbacks from the old Pink Panther movies. Or perhaps the old Herbie movies for the Disney set. We also found the road blocked by a couple of kids, perhaps 9 years old, who had tied their horses to a road sign and a basketball goal, so they could wash them on the street. While we had to work around them, we also stopped to take pictures. It was very cute.
After reading this, you might think that the drivers were all mean and rude. Actually they were all pretty nice. This is just the accepted way of driving there. I saw no fingers. No flared tempers. Just people going about there business. At one intersection in downtown Fajardo, I did get to play chicken with one old guy. He had a scowl on his face. Two lanes of traffic were both turning down one road, while ignoring the stop signs. He tried to block me from merging between him and a car he was following out of his road opposite mine. I am fearless, however. I got the position and held him off. He had a big truck, and when I got in front of his hood, I held my head up and grinned at him, showing lots of teeth. His sour expression did not change. The lady sitting next to him, who looked like might be his wife, did burst out laughing.
My one piece of advice for driving in Puerto Rico. Get a rent-a-car and get the insurance they offer. For ten bucks a day, it is well worth it.
your note []Copyright 2002 Tim
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