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| Need I say more?! |
Anyone living in Turkey or even any regular visitors, will know that driving A La Turk, requires angelic-like patience, sheer steel of determination and the ability not to poo your pants at what is (regardless whether it is meant to be or not, either in reverse or otherwise) coming directly towards you at high speeds.
The Turkish driving test is driving off road in a quiet field then answering a few road sign questions, and my Turkish friend is asking experienced drivers to help her drive on main roads! The fact that even she is scared doesn't do much to put my mind at rest if I ever need to rent a car!
Cars, buses, (especially) taxis, dolmuşlar (can't pluralize easily in English), motorbikes, lorries .... they are all - well the drivers of ... are all to blame for the complete stupidity on the roads. Men listen up now - your jokes about bad female drivers can't exist here because EVERYONE is as bad as each other. Even the regular occurrence of motorcyclists without any form of protective clothing is bad enough, but when you see mum, dad, 1 child and a baby precariously squeezed together on one small moped (not even a motorbike!), clearly without any sense of danger, scooting around no matter the weather, one starts to wonder if anyone really cares! I know that health and safety does not exist - men in flip flops or bare feet and a pair of shorts dangling on wobbly scaffolding, passing large planks of wood to the person similarly attired above them - is just a little proof of that, but people surely need to have a sense of danger engrained into them. I also know that maybe health and safety goes beyond ridiculous with all the red tape and do's and don'ts that exist. Where is the happy medium? Does it exist? Has is ever existed in the first place?
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of scaffolding hanging from one hand at a time. When I took this photo, he had just landed and re-steadied himself by using the paint roller! |
All this makes me a little worried about the looming 10 hour trip to Kuşadası along very narrow, winding mountain roads at high speeds, often on cliff edges with a too-high-for-comfort vertical drop to one side, and with vehicles coming towards you at high speeds, often on the wrong side of the road.
Where I live, even the way you go around a roundabout is optional. Turkish thinking; "Oh! It's quicker to go that way even though I might get killed!" It would be very funny if it wasn't so dangerous.
I get travel sick also, so I think you can begin to understand the trepidation I am facing...
Back to my original rant about driving here and the constant use of the horn aka "Beep! Beep! Beepity-beep-beep, Beep! Beep! Beep!" You cannot escape the horn. No way! Any time, anywhere, the horn will beep you! Half a second after the traffic light turns green everybody beeps! You want to stop a moving bus and have a change - you beep! You're about to start military service you and the convoy following you, certainly go "Beep! Beep! Beepity-beep-beep, Beep! Beep! Beeeeeeeeeeep!" At junctions cars block the road so you can't go, you wait and then the same thing happens again and again........then everybody behind beeps! It's the endless beeping syndrome!
What also gets up my skin you ask? Well ...
- Nobody ever lets you out from a side road, you have to push and push to try and get out. The reason why nobody lets you out? Because if you let 1 car out about 20 more follow and then you have everybody behind you beeping you!!
- Nobody ever flashes or hand signals to say thanks.
- In traffic a car behind you overtakes and pushes in front of you - just to pass 1 car - what's the point!!?? I ask you!!??
- Traffic lights appear suddenly even at mini roundabout when there was no need for them and it creates loads of traffic and confusion.
- Everyone is so angry, I have seen proper fisticuffs for the smallest of incidents many times.
Aaaah the joys of driving in Turkey!!
Leave a comment saying where your worst driving experiences happened. What did you do?
Having had the pleasure of a few visits to Turkey, I can verify the manic way of the roads...have seen a tractor driven by a man and his wife sits on the the stack of hay that is beingr towed... 3 people on a moped, a moped being riden with driver laying flat....a moped with the driver sitting side saddle....and with his arms crossed..!
ReplyDeleteThere are so many funny ways of driving here and it is commonplace for any vehicle of anysize to start to reverse around a roundabout! Maybe that is why they are beginning to put in traffic lights at each exit now? But then again- I can't think of any reason why the roundabout here need traffic lights at all! People just need to follow the worldwide standard traffic rules!
DeleteI have some friends who say driving in Turkey is a piece of cake compared to where they used to live! That thenmakes me think of India and the time I spent in Morocco - maybe Turkey is not so crazy!!