Terrifying driving countries and experiences
Discussion
Gad-Westy said:
nikaiyo2 said:
techguyone said:
wonder if the tales match up to the countries shown here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by...
WOW the UK has the joint 3rd lowest death rate in the world, behind Federated States of Micronesia and Switzerland, you would have thought that would be quite widely publicized/ celebrated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by...
Those nominating Egypt are bang on. I've lived and driven in many 3rd world countries.
The quality and standard in Egypt is no worse than many other 3rd world countries. What makes it stand out is the speed. Pedal to the floor stuff whatever the conditions. I honestly think that they do believe that is God's will whether they get there alive or not, and their own actions are entirely irrelevant.
The quality and standard in Egypt is no worse than many other 3rd world countries. What makes it stand out is the speed. Pedal to the floor stuff whatever the conditions. I honestly think that they do believe that is God's will whether they get there alive or not, and their own actions are entirely irrelevant.
Not driving, but in a cab from central Istanbul to the airport. Car had seat belts in the back, but the seat covers made access to the buckle impossible. The guy then proceeds to drive like an absolute maniac; a journey that would usually take 90 minutes+ he achieved in 45. Special highlights were overtaking on hard shoulder, lane changing whilst missing other vehicles by, I'd guess, about 6 inches, plus spending 25% of the journey turned around telling me what a good driver he was. I actually emailed the office to tell my secretary I was probably not going to make it home.
legless said:
thainy77 said:
They are complete muppets on the road, turning lights off at night to save the battery etc.
A variation on this that I saw in both Cairo and Luxor is replacing the headlamp bulb with a single 5mm colour-changing LED. A definite WTF moment the first time I saw it. In Egypt the wackiest lighting I experienced was a Pug 504 taxi that took us the wrong way up a dual carriageway as "we were only going a short way" - he didn't have working front or rear lights, however he had thoughtfully fitted red lights inside his wheel arches so that you could see the silhouette of his wheels from the side
I spent a few weeks working in Taiwan a couple of years back. When I arrived, travelling in Taxis was disconcerting to say the least. There was lots of weaving between lanes at fairly high speed and horn blowing, all while the taxi driver was steering with one hand, continuously using his phone with the other, and half watching a film on a TV mounted on the dashboard!
However, once I'd got used to the driving style, despite all the distractions the taxi driver's observation and anticipation was actually much better than in the average UK taxi.
The main difficulty with driving there myself was finding my way around. The roadsigns are entirely in Chinese, with very few numbers or anything else I could recognise without taking some language lessons! They did have one feature which should be brought to the UK though - all the traffic lights have a countdown indicator on them so you know how long before they are going to change to green. The whole time I was there, I don't think I saw a single car which was slow to set off when the green light appeared.
However, once I'd got used to the driving style, despite all the distractions the taxi driver's observation and anticipation was actually much better than in the average UK taxi.
The main difficulty with driving there myself was finding my way around. The roadsigns are entirely in Chinese, with very few numbers or anything else I could recognise without taking some language lessons! They did have one feature which should be brought to the UK though - all the traffic lights have a countdown indicator on them so you know how long before they are going to change to green. The whole time I was there, I don't think I saw a single car which was slow to set off when the green light appeared.
A vote for Kuwait. The combination of sheer reckless and mindlessly aggressive driving by the locals in huge 4 x 4s combined with the largely Indian sub content expat majority whose driving style of anything goes makes for lethal combination. Ive Iived and travelled in many Asian countries but Kuwait takes the biscuit.
M1 coming up to Coventry / Birmingham last Sat I probably saw some of the worse driving I ever seen and it was in UK, it was an Audi A6 black, blacked out windows, I had my misses and 2 year old in the car and he nearly killed us, driving literally on my rear bumper, in and out of traffic like he was some racing driver, I cant believe he had a license.
Gad-Westy said:
nikaiyo2 said:
techguyone said:
wonder if the tales match up to the countries shown here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by...
WOW the UK has the joint 3rd lowest death rate in the world, behind Federated States of Micronesia and Switzerland, you would have thought that would be quite widely publicized/ celebrated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by...
Edited by Gad-Westy on Thursday 5th April 13:22
I'm from Australia, which has approx 2x the road toll per capita and can write volumes of the bad behaviours of Australian drivers which aren't done here. Here in the UK, you rarely get tailgated, people don't try to block and speed match you when overtaking. The majority of people do keep to the left hand lanes. Australia is better than the US and again the US is better than the Philippines.
Sure the UK isn't perfect, but it's pretty damn good. That doesn't mean we cant improve though. Phone use is steadily increasing and the indicator seems to have gone out of style.
lotuselan7 said:
A vote for Kuwait. The combination of sheer reckless and mindlessly aggressive driving by the locals in huge 4 x 4s combined with the largely Indian sub content expat majority whose driving style of anything goes makes for lethal combination. Ive Iived and travelled in many Asian countries but Kuwait takes the biscuit.
Fatalistic culture and reincarnation religion makes for a very bad combination to begin with... Add time pressure and oppressive bosses working them to the bone and it would easily make Kuwait or any of their ME contemporaries worse to drive in than India itself. India. I learned to drive in Delhi, many years ago. A mate of mine from school (who was outrageously well connected over there) wanted to do the whole tourist thing, and invited us out. On the second evening there, we all went to a party, including my mate's police bodyguard, who was driving. Everyone got battered, I was still reasonably sober as at the tender age of 18, I only had a taste for beer rather than whisky. The bodyguard hands me the car keys at the end of the evening - he's so plastered, he can hardly walk.
"You must drive, you've only had beer"
"Er, mate, I can't drive"
"No, its fine, you can drive with beer"
"You don't understand, I can't actually drive, I don't have a licence"
"That doesn't matter"
So, my first experience behind the wheel was in a white Hindustan Ambassador, fairly mullered, driving in an unfamiliar city, with a pissed up copper in the passenger seat. Thankfully he dealt with all the checkpoints on the way...
Anyway, to more recent history. I'll nominate the drive from Mumbai to Pune. Any sane people do this trip in an aeroplane, but I looked at the map and thought "247K, how hard can it be" and got a cab.
Indian city driving is fine. It's chaotic, but so slow that it doesn't matter and no one gets hurt. However, as soon as the road clears, the speed goes up. There are a couple of problems at this stage:
- The diverse mix of cars. You have knackered old lorries and rickshaws sharing the road with Range Rovers, and everything else in between. The Range Rovers are doing 80, the lorries are doing < 10 uphill.
- Lane discipline. The Indian version of the Highway Code must have been based on an episode of The Wacky Races. The aforementioned Range Rover was carving though the lanes as if he was in a video game.
- Random Stopping. At the top of a particularly steep gradient, which we were doing 70 on, a lorry had decided to stop. In the middle lane of a 3 lane motorway. They'd piled wood behind the rear wheels to stop it rolling backwards (clearly the handbrake had been made by Alfa-Romeo), and were having a brew at the front.
- The attitude to fate. Last stop before returning to Mumbai was a road side tea shack, where the cab driver did all the talking and small cups of sweet tea suddenly appeared. As the sun went down, he explained to me that the drive was scary, but it was not his day to die, as he had survived it. He had a small Ganesh (elephant god) on his dashboard, and I was tempted to get one, has he'd clearly been looking out for us over the previous 48 hours.
"You must drive, you've only had beer"
"Er, mate, I can't drive"
"No, its fine, you can drive with beer"
"You don't understand, I can't actually drive, I don't have a licence"
"That doesn't matter"
So, my first experience behind the wheel was in a white Hindustan Ambassador, fairly mullered, driving in an unfamiliar city, with a pissed up copper in the passenger seat. Thankfully he dealt with all the checkpoints on the way...
Anyway, to more recent history. I'll nominate the drive from Mumbai to Pune. Any sane people do this trip in an aeroplane, but I looked at the map and thought "247K, how hard can it be" and got a cab.
Indian city driving is fine. It's chaotic, but so slow that it doesn't matter and no one gets hurt. However, as soon as the road clears, the speed goes up. There are a couple of problems at this stage:
- The diverse mix of cars. You have knackered old lorries and rickshaws sharing the road with Range Rovers, and everything else in between. The Range Rovers are doing 80, the lorries are doing < 10 uphill.
- Lane discipline. The Indian version of the Highway Code must have been based on an episode of The Wacky Races. The aforementioned Range Rover was carving though the lanes as if he was in a video game.
- Random Stopping. At the top of a particularly steep gradient, which we were doing 70 on, a lorry had decided to stop. In the middle lane of a 3 lane motorway. They'd piled wood behind the rear wheels to stop it rolling backwards (clearly the handbrake had been made by Alfa-Romeo), and were having a brew at the front.
- The attitude to fate. Last stop before returning to Mumbai was a road side tea shack, where the cab driver did all the talking and small cups of sweet tea suddenly appeared. As the sun went down, he explained to me that the drive was scary, but it was not his day to die, as he had survived it. He had a small Ganesh (elephant god) on his dashboard, and I was tempted to get one, has he'd clearly been looking out for us over the previous 48 hours.
Riyadh in the early 80s, the Al Kharj road had a reputation as the most dangerous in the world, trucks wandering all over the place.
The Saudis were hopeless drivers, and that was before they allowed women to drive😀, they were very quick on the horn when the traffic lights change. It was childish to pull up behind a car at the lights and give a honk while the lights were red, inevitably the driver was too busy picking his nose to realise they were still red.....
The other childish thing was driving through the big puddle outside the mosque and soaking all of the sandles left outside.
Oh happy days!
The Saudis were hopeless drivers, and that was before they allowed women to drive😀, they were very quick on the horn when the traffic lights change. It was childish to pull up behind a car at the lights and give a honk while the lights were red, inevitably the driver was too busy picking his nose to realise they were still red.....
The other childish thing was driving through the big puddle outside the mosque and soaking all of the sandles left outside.
Oh happy days!
gareth h said:
Riyadh in the early 80s, the Al Kharj road had a reputation as the most dangerous in the world, trucks wandering all over the place.
The Saudis were hopeless drivers, and that was before they allowed women to drive??, they were very quick on the horn when the traffic lights change. It was childish to pull up behind a car at the lights and give a honk while the lights were red, inevitably the driver was too busy picking his nose to realise they were still red.....
The other childish thing was driving through the big puddle outside the mosque and soaking all of the sandles left outside.
Oh happy days!
I spent a bit of time in Saudi (Medinah) last year and the driving was a bit weird. It's quite aggressive and fast but everyone seems so distracted. Lots of lane wandering and general inattentiveness. If it were anywhere else, you'd assume everyone was pissed. Medinah at least wasn't very congested though there were some close calls. My taxi man spent every journey on the phone the whole time on the same call, about an hour each way. Who are they talking to that can talk for that long and when will bluetooth make its way to one of the richest countries on earth? The Saudis were hopeless drivers, and that was before they allowed women to drive??, they were very quick on the horn when the traffic lights change. It was childish to pull up behind a car at the lights and give a honk while the lights were red, inevitably the driver was too busy picking his nose to realise they were still red.....
The other childish thing was driving through the big puddle outside the mosque and soaking all of the sandles left outside.
Oh happy days!
Agree with poster above about Kuwait as well. Big V8 US cars screaming around everywhere seemingly largely out of control. Like Saudi, it does feel like you could be involved in a very big accident there quite easily.
sticks090460 said:
Not driving, but in a cab from central Istanbul to the airport. Car had seat belts in the back, but the seat covers made access to the buckle impossible. The guy then proceeds to drive like an absolute maniac; a journey that would usually take 90 minutes+ he achieved in 45. Special highlights were overtaking on hard shoulder, lane changing whilst missing other vehicles by, I'd guess, about 6 inches, plus spending 25% of the journey turned around telling me what a good driver he was. I actually emailed the office to tell my secretary I was probably not going to make it home.
Same taxi ride for me one very early morning on a freeway through Istanbul in a taxi with bald tyres doing 80ish. As we crossed a bridge over a ravine another taxi coming the opposite direction doing a similar speed lost it on the still damp bridge and hit the central reservation right in front of me. My driver got an almighty tankslapper on but saved it but the other taxi flew in the air for dozens of metres with limbs hanging out of windows and barrel rolled at least 5 times. They must have been toast. Never have I been so glad to get back to Blighty.
captain_cynic said:
Gad-Westy said:
nikaiyo2 said:
techguyone said:
wonder if the tales match up to the countries shown here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by...
WOW the UK has the joint 3rd lowest death rate in the world, behind Federated States of Micronesia and Switzerland, you would have thought that would be quite widely publicized/ celebrated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by...
Edited by Gad-Westy on Thursday 5th April 13:22
2) Yes they do.
3) No they don't.
G'day.
I think the difference with some of these countries is, they have improved significantly. When I first visited China in the mid 90’s it was hair raising to say the least. There are many anecdotes I could regale, but lets just say, there were many moments, I may have shortened peoples life span or indeed had, my own severely curtailed, except for sheer luck.
However, road safety has improved beyond measure, to the point; I may have a couple of oh moments on the average journey.
Thailand, I found OK, people seem courteous on the road, Vietnam, yes lots of scooters, lots of horn beeping (never in anger) but just seems to work, never felt in danger.
Taiwan, just mental on so many levels, drink driving, merging from the right without consideration for what’s on the road, driving at speed with no consideration for weather conditions (the only place, I took a break) until weather conditions improved. Fully licensed taxi home from the pub, Subaru Impreza WRX, complete with cage, bucket seats and full harness, quickest ride ever, regardless of origin and destination, loved the engine note!
Never driven in India, which I’m sure, is very scary, as I’m sure are some of the other place mentioned here.
But my top spot, for brown trouser moments goes to Indonesia.
Carriage way direction optional
Lights option
Road worthiness optional
DUI optional
Load weights optional
Road conditional optional
Night driving not optional, unless suicidal
the optional list could go on and on
As said in my opening remarks, some of these countries have improved road safety significantly. However, others have not, notably in my experience, Indonesia!
However, road safety has improved beyond measure, to the point; I may have a couple of oh moments on the average journey.
Thailand, I found OK, people seem courteous on the road, Vietnam, yes lots of scooters, lots of horn beeping (never in anger) but just seems to work, never felt in danger.
Taiwan, just mental on so many levels, drink driving, merging from the right without consideration for what’s on the road, driving at speed with no consideration for weather conditions (the only place, I took a break) until weather conditions improved. Fully licensed taxi home from the pub, Subaru Impreza WRX, complete with cage, bucket seats and full harness, quickest ride ever, regardless of origin and destination, loved the engine note!
Never driven in India, which I’m sure, is very scary, as I’m sure are some of the other place mentioned here.
But my top spot, for brown trouser moments goes to Indonesia.
Carriage way direction optional
Lights option
Road worthiness optional
DUI optional
Load weights optional
Road conditional optional
Night driving not optional, unless suicidal
the optional list could go on and on
As said in my opening remarks, some of these countries have improved road safety significantly. However, others have not, notably in my experience, Indonesia!
nonsequitur said:
captain_cynic said:
I'm from Australia, which has approx 2x the road toll per capita and can write volumes of the bad behaviours of Australian drivers which aren't done here. Here in the UK, you rarely get tailgated, people don't try to block and speed match you when overtaking. The majority of people do keep to the left hand lanes.
1) Yes we do.2) Yes they do.
3) No they don't.
G'day.
2) Again this might happen once in every 500,000 passes here but in Australia every Falcodore is the overtaking overwatch, they will actively block you at any opportunity. Give them a moments notice to your intent to get ahead of them and they'll move to block any avenue to do so.
3) Again, yes they do. The vast majority of people in the UK will keep left. This surprised the hell out of me when I first started driving here to find that the RH lane of the motorway was relatively clear and being used for the purpose of going faster than the left hand lanes. Usually in Australia its full of SUV's doing 10 (with steering wheel attendant firmly attached to phone) under the speed limit being tailgated by Falcodores (half of them will also be on the phone). Often a left hand lane was going faster which sometimes caused the mass lane change of death which I have not witnessed here in the UK.
I think you're a perfect example of what I was talking about. You've never driven in any other country so cannot see just how good things are here. I cant remember the last time I was actually tailgated here in the UK, I have only been blocked from overtaking once (white van (small) man straddled two lanes) and unless I get stuck in traffic, the right hand lane can usually be used for overtaking. What is moderate traffic on British motorways would be utter gridlock on a Perth Freeway. If you went to Perth you would first marvel at the nice wide roads and abundant dual carriageways... after 2 or 3 days you'd be asking how traffic on such plentiful road space can be so bad.
This says nothing of the phone use epidemic in Australia. Fortunately it hasn't reached pandemic proportions in the UK yet (not that we shouldn't be nipping that behaviour in the bud... you do not want it to get as bad as Australia before you start to take action).
Oh, and speed cameras. You'd think that those nice wide open roads would be good for a blast on a lazy Sunday... But Perth's finest will have the multi-nova's (portable LIDAR, not much bigger than a DSLR) hidden behind a bush to kill that idea with fines starting from just $100 (fines are cheaper, but the cameras will get you for just 3 KPH over) and WA has far fewer speed cameras per capita compared to Sydney and Melbourne. Britain is a great place for the petrol head.
Like I said, I could write volumes on it.
Gad-Westy said:
nikaiyo2 said:
techguyone said:
wonder if the tales match up to the countries shown here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by...
WOW the UK has the joint 3rd lowest death rate in the world, behind Federated States of Micronesia and Switzerland, you would have thought that would be quite widely publicized/ celebrated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by...
Edited by Gad-Westy on Thursday 5th April 13:22
CPWilliams said:
Quality/ speed of emergency services and trauma care are probably a big factor too.
The quality and age of the UK fleet vs. some third world country also has a huge bearing on survival. If you're properly belted in, you've got to be fairly unlucky to die in a UK crash below 40 MPH. In less rigorous jurisdictions, you may be an old car that would fail an MOT in the UK with ease .... and thus fold up like a bean can when hit. Also quality of roads, signage etc.
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