Driver's Ed

It's been interesting to drive here. 

First I had to get used to driving a stick shift again. (nearly everyone drives stick shifts here.) It came back to me pretty quickly, but given that I'm driving a stick shift mini-van it's a bit different than my old Honda Civic. 

The other thing I noticed back when I first started visiting here was that traffic really flows. There are more round-abouts and merges than hard stops, so the traffic really seems to keep moving. There's still traffic and slow going during the rush hours, but otherwise you can slow and roll through most intersections. In fact, not moving is what throws things off. Whenever  I was tentative in the beginning, that got me into trouble on the road. Once I saw a small car turned into because it didn't merge when a big truck assumed it would go.

There's a "no right turn at a red light" thing here. It drove me crazy at first to sit at one of the few stoplights and no be allowed to turn when there were no cars coming! I've only forgotten that once.

The idea that "the person to the right has the right of way" is very strong here. There's a clear outlook here on who has the right of way in any situation and people will go out of their way to make sure their rights are not usurped. This includes on neighborhood streets, unless there are triangle marking that denote when one street yields to another. There are streets that are the "through" streets, but on them you have to give way to side streets that come from the right. This doesn't make sense to me and I've seen it ignored many times. 

At the same time, there seems to be greater respect for other drivers' rights. There are a lot of streets which are barely wide enough for 2-way traffic. Then people park on the sides of the roads making room for 1-way at a time. For vehicles to go either way, one car has to give way to the other. I find most people are "fair" about whether they wait or go. I think it's because they have to do it so much around here that it would really cause trouble if too many people didn't follow the rules. So, if the parked car is on your side of the road, you give way to the oncoming car. Similarly, if another car is already coming between parked cars (where there is room for only one car to get through) you allow that car to continue. The times I've messed up on this I've been amazed at how determined the other drivers can be about making sure I know that I'm the one who needs to get out of the way. One woman kept driving toward me until I backed up a car length or two to make room for her to get by. (The parked car was on my side of the road, after all. I didn't get past it quick enough.)

When there is doubt about who should go, the signal here that you're letting the other person go is to flash your headlights at them. This caused me some confusion when we first moved here. I kept wondering what I was doing so wrong that would make people flash their lights at me! I kept thinking that I should have the right of way, but they were flashing at me. I didn't realize they were agreeing with me. In fact, people flash their lights a lot to other cars, to bikers or walkers. It also helps keep things moving.

When I was in Oregon last month I know I sat at a red light when I could have gone ahead and turned. (Okay, it probably happened more than once.) And I had to remind myself to make full stops at stop signs. Oh, and I kept trying to hit the clutch when coming to a stop and after I got back to Belgium I kept forgetting to depress the clutch when starting or stopping my van. Habits are hard to break.