A Different Kind of Road Rage

The driving in Mexico enrages me. Everyone, Mexicans and gringos alike, treats the driving laws as if they are simply guidelines that you are free to follow or not. Mostly not.

I also find it terrifying that pretty much everyone (but especially the women, I must say) drives while talking on their cell phone or, worse, while texting!

Every day, on our less than 4 kilometre round trip to and from our gym, we see at least 4-5 outrageous examples of extremely reckless driving that endangers everyone around (and often us). These include dangerous moves such as: running red lights (like a full 2-3 seconds after the light has gone red, and even making left turns against oncoming highway traffic when the turning lane light is red!), illegal turns, improper/illegal merging, illegal U-turns, illegal passing, and speeding galore.

In every other situation where I have seen Mexicans required to line up and peacefully wait their turn, they will do it, patiently and with good humour. Whereas I almost lose my mind in the 2 hour lines at the TelCel store, they seem content to wait. But, put them behind the wheel of a car and they immediately need to be FIRST, and NOW! They can't seem to stand to have anyone in front of them and seem prepared to play bumper cars or risk their lives (and yours) to get to the front of the traffic. It just makes no sense to me.

Yesterday morning we were on our way to the gym and witnessed something that had us feeling ill for hours. We were on the side ("lateral") road just pulling up to wait to turn left across and off the highway. Right next to us was the 4 lane divided highway to Puerto Vallarta; the two southbound lanes were beside us. Ahead of us in the near right lane of the highway (on our left) was a car stopped at the red light. A Jeep Wrangler (a gringo driver, we believe) suddenly appeared from behind at high speed in the right lane (on our left), probably realizing much too late the light ahead was red and the car in front of him was stopped. He wrenched the wheel left to go around the stopped car at about 60 miles an hour - in the process totally cutting off the car in the left lane of the highway that was pulling up to the red light. The Jeep Wrangler driver inserted his careening vehicle at deadly speed between these two other cars like it was an Indie 500 race track with maybe 2 inches to spare and sailed through a red light! It was breathtakingly awful to see how close complete disaster came - grievous injury and death - in the wink of an eye.

There were some guardian angels at work in that intersection. It doesn't take any imagination to realize the carnage that would have resulted if he hadn't been insanely lucky to thread that needle between the two other cars. At his speed and trajectory, he and the two other cars would have been rocketed into the intersection into other vehicles as well as pedestrians. It would have been a bloodbath. We were very shaken by what almost occurred, and I pray others were as well - especially that Jeep driver!

I blame a few things for this kind of driving:

1) Hollywood Movies - for making people think it's acceptable to drive on city streets and highways like it's a Nascar track.

2) Video Games - for making people think after getting injured or killed, you can simply hit a "Reset" button and carry on.

3) The Education System - for failing to make people understand the laws of physics.

End of rant.

Todo bien. (It's all good...except for the driving).