Driving me crazy…
Thursday, December 15th, 2005In a few days I’ll pack me bags, tie me laces, give the clouds a sneaky wink, and leave Hanoi for the United States of America.
Before I do that however, I’m afraid I have to deliver a bit of a rant. If you’re not in the mood for a rant, please scroll downwards. I have plenty of non-ranty pieces below. Some of them even involve cute animals.
My rant is about drivers in Hanoi. Hanoian drivers. Hanoian motorcycle drivers.
Hanoian motorcycle drivers dont appear to follow any set of rules. They are individual determinists. They are free spirits. Now, as a general rule I think free-spiritedness is great. An attribute to be admired, even. But not when it could well end up with me lying on a cold slab in a darkened Vietnamese morgue.
Here is a brief list of what Hanoian motorcycle drivers get up to:
– Weaving manically between other bikes.
– Driving at night with no lights.
– Driving at night with lights on full beam, thereby practically blinding oncoming veichles.
– Going the wrong way down 1-way streets.
– Ignoring red lights at will.
– Pulling out into traffic without so much as a glance to see if they might hit anyone.
– Incessant horn blowing. Before a traffic light even turns green, people are honking behind you.
There’s all this, plus the fact that practically nobody wears a helmet, and mirrors are considered “unfashionable”. Seriously. Many people who do have mirrors on their bikes – have them flipped down and unused. Then you have the convoy phenomenon, where people drive several bikes abreast so as to be able to chat to their friends whilst driving. To be fair, this applies more to bicycles, where it is not uncommon to see 4 or 5 in a convoy, thus blocking the road to everybody else.
I saw a girl get knocked off her bike yesterday. The perpetrator seemingly did a hit-and-run. Just a few seconds earlier, some boy racer had clipped my back wheel in his urgent need to arrive at his destination 2 minutes earlier. Luckily, I managed to keep control of my bike. Two weeks ago, some kid pushed a bicycle straight into my path on a major road without even looking. I had no time to avoid it, and the bicycle was knocked to the ground. Thankfully, the kid was not. I’ve seen flesh and blood on the streets. I’ve been hit several times, had my trousers ripped and my foot cut. I once had to stop a motorbike with my hand because the driver was looking one way and driving another.
Frankly, I’m glad to be out of it. I can feel myself getting pissed off with the utter carelessness and thoughtlessness of other drivers (of course it’s not everyone – plenty of people here drive just fine, one bloke apologising profusely when he accidentally drove over my foot – but it’s enough people to be a concern).
So roll on America. Rant over. Happy days.
The Dude