1) A stop sign means be careful.
2) A red light means slow down.
3) A green light means slow way down and be careful (see rule 2)
4) Momentum = Mass x velocity. Right of way is granted to who ever has the most momentum entering the intersection.
5) If you make eye contact with the other driver, you have yielded the right of way.
6) The majority of streets are one way, but most signs are seldomly found and randomly placed. To determine the direction take note of the way the cars are parked. But one way is just a suggestion, if you REALLY need to go down that street, simply put on your hazard lights and proceed carefully down the street.
7) The police are ineffective, so to control speeding they use speed bumps (topes) and the road painted to look like speed bumps (fauxpes). If you assume fauxpes and get topes, say bye bye suspension. Sometimes, they put an unmarked tope 30 ft in front of a marked fauxpe... so you start to slow down and hear BANG BANG as you leave the air in your tires and a significant portion of your undercarriage behind. There are sometimes locals sitting at these, drinking cerveza and laughing their heads off.
All of that changed this week.
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/world/story.html?id=d5a33875-0540-42b8-8e68-148ac77fa647&k=73725
Ciudad is going to start expecting people to obey the law and encourage police officers not to take bribes.
I know this may come as a shock to many of you that this is news down here. It is on all the radios, people talk about in normal conversation.... What would it be like here if people obeyed the law and police didn't take bribes...?
Well on the first day, everyone was still doing 80 kph on Reforma, in the bus lane... it was a beautiful dream.
My favorite part was driving on the first day the laws were supposed to take effect. Everyday, I turn left at the Angel of Independence. Everyday, the police hold a clinic on why laws don't really matter by waving drivers through the red light to clear Reforma. For some reason it is too hard to change the timing on the lights and easier to pay 6 people to wave traffic through the red... Like every other day, there they stood waving people through. This, to me, typifies the traffic picture in Ciudad. A systematic shared agreement to do the expedient in place of the lawful.
For those who know me, you know I am prone to bending the traffic rules. But traffic here has shown me what can happen if the law isn't enforced. The good and the bad. It is chaos but it develops its own order. People will cooperate at times to enforce their interests, but other times the two year old narcissist comes out and blocks 6 lanes of traffic to be 6 ft closer to the destination. It works 95% of the time and 5% of the time it is an unmitigated disaster.
It may just be what I am used to... but thank a cop the next time you earn a ticket. Sure you hate the ticket but you made the choice to break the law and you know it. Take it from me, you are glad, even if you don't know it, that officer is there to enforce those rules and you are glad he is giving you a ticket instead of asking for a $50 bribe.
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