The South Korean Hyundai have been imported in ever-growing numbers. As is the case with most large cities worldwide, San José also experiments its own traffic jams during the peak hours., especially between 7-9 a.m. and 4-7 p.m., Fridays are terrible particularly when it's raining. Eventually, you'll get to know what short cuts to take to avoid them and save time. When driving, use your good judgement and manners, be patient and don't honk at the car in front of you. A recent TV documentary showed how many Ticos become monsters or feel they're superman when they're driving. However, not all is bad, and provided you don't adopt the same superman complex, you'll soon be a happy driver thoroughly enjoying yourself, but, of course, not during the city traffic peak hours.
A few additional remarks by Jörn Malek that might be of interest
The situation is not that bad as described above but much worse. I made my first drivers-licence driving on the left in 1960 in England. I hold other driver's licenses from Austria, Switzerland, Taxi, Motorcycle, New York, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and I took a VIP drivers course. I used to drive a school-bus in Switzerland in the morning and drove a car in almost all European countries (from Finnland to Portugal, Yugoslavia, Southern Italy to England. I came to Costa Rica driving a car from New York to Panama and back to San José about 40 years ago.
My first car was an old Jaguar and my second a Porche S90 which I drove at age 19 in Switzerland when they didn't have any speed limits. I never had an accident or was involved in one except in Costa Rica, where four years ago I hit a broken-down truck that was standing in the middle of the highway in the middle of the night with no warning sign or lights on, while I was blinded by the traffic coming towards me. Nobody in the car saw that vehicle until I hit it, we all survived even our 2-year old, we all were wearing seat-belts and our Toyota Previa took the whole impact, we were hardly shaken.
I personally like to drive fast. I always did. It keeps me awake and in the left lane. In my family I had Peugeot Rally Drivers, I personally owned a Peugeot that for 2 consecutive years was Swiss Rally Champion. When I was younger I had the theory that if two cars crash the faster driver is more likely to survive (as long as you don't crash in a parked car, of course). I still like to drive fast, in Costa Rica this is still possible at three o'clock in the morning or early on Sundays because the main problem here is that almost no driver has an accurate driving education (one of the few exceptions are the bus-drivers of the Caribeño buses). Just yesterday in Belén not far from our office I personally observed a driver with a small DHL-truck turning the truck upside-down because he was breaking hard and trying to make a curve at the same time. If you position yourself in any curve and watch the cars drive by, you'll see that most drivers have their foot on the brake. One of the main causes of accidents is breaking in curves. The next problem is the miserable technical conditions of many cars and specifically the headlights that constantly blind you at night.
In the past I thought that it is the many pot-holes in the streets that misadjust the lights, but today we have very little holes and 50% of the lights still blind you. As Frank Thomas Gallardo mentioned in his text, most rules or regulations are not known or not followed here. When I take my kids to school 9 out of 10 parents back out into the main street with their car instead of first turning the car around. The only way to survive here is driving defensively (keeping distance), specially if you see a car with a large exhaust pipe. There applies what I call the "The Relativity Theory of Zweistein": The larger the exhaust pipe the smaller the IQ. Our new car is a Nissan Pathfinder. It has airbags in front on the sides and on the car-ceiling. I believe it to be the best car to get around in Costa Rica. We drive tens of thousands of kilometres every year in Costa Rica mostly at night, since during the daytime we have to work (visiting places and taking pictures). By the way, a recent study reveals that Costa Rica occupies the 3rd place of the worlds worst drivers after Peru and North Korea.
I have three personal recommendations. 1.) Drive in way that you stay awake don't loose concentration, not too slow but not faster in curves that you could stop for a broken down car or an ox-car in the middle of the road. 2.) If you can avoid it, don't drive at night or if you have to, at 3 o'clock in the morning (watch for cows, horses, people sitting in the street and bicycles without lights). 3.) Stay on the defence, stay calm, the friendly Ticos become the opposite on the road. Here all their frustrations convert into horsepower; here they think that they are immortal Michael Schumachers. By the way, I love to drive in Costa Rica because in 8 years I only had one speeding-ticket. (No hidden radars like in Switzerland). Have a happy day. Jörn
|
