Driving

More than two weeks into our trip, and I am still trying to figure out South Africans. It is a complex society, sometimes very familiar to Canadians, sometimes completely incomprehensible.

The road safety statistics are horrific. Much of the radio news this time of the year is about the death toll on the nation's roads during the Summer holiday travel season. By province, the daily numbers are in the dozens. Annually, more than 10,000 people are killed in road accidents in a country with less than 50 Million people (the vast majority of which are impoverished and do not own a car).

Driving on the highways, it is easy to see why. The roads are generally in great shape and wide, which of course encourages fast driving. There is no visible enforcement of speed limits, drinking drivers, or seatbelt laws (which end in the front seat anyway). The speed limits are largely ignored.

Therefore, driving down the 120km/h limited two-lane main highways, there are rat-trap old pick-ups with the beds stuffed full of people doing 80km/h, and shiny German Bahn-burners doing 200km/h.

The system developed to manage this seems to be that anyone doing the speed limit or less drives on the shoulder, giving cars who would like to overtake about 3/4 of a lane to do so. Passing zone or not, oncoming traffic or not, South Africans take advantage of this

3/4 lane, and flash their 4-ways as a thank-you gesture to the guy blasting down the shoulder at 100km/h for getting the hell out of the way. This is made more exciting by hitch-hikers and fruit stand hawkers standing on the shoulder, and random wildlife and domestic animal crossings. Throw in slow, lumbering transport trucks and speed-frantic minibus taxis, and it is surprising the death toll isn't higher.

In South Africa, people pass in construction zones, by speeding through the closed lane where construction is currently taking place.

A complete free-for-all.

The minibus taxis are their own phenomenon. They are the dominant form of "public transportation" in both rural and urban areas. They are usually Toyota 15-passenger vans, commonly stuffed with 19 or 20 people (not counting babes-in-arms). They are everywhere, and operate without clear routes or schedules.

Sometimes they hang out at taxi stands adjacent to town centres, markets, or major crossroads. Here, they have a destination in mind, and wait until they have a full enough load, then go. Alternately, you can stand on the side of the road or the freeway and wave them down. If they are going your way and have room, they might stop. The way they know your destination as they fly by at 120km/h is in your wave. There are both standard and local wave codes, but generally, a finger pointing up means to the town centre, down means a shorter distance towards town, tracing a circle means bypass the next town centre and (in Durban at least), making waves with all four fingers means "to the beach".

The business is competitive, with the driver requiring to pay a flat daily fee to the van owner, and pay for his own gas, so he needs to collect a lot of fares in a day to get paid, which means the drivers are amongst the most aggressive on the roads. They usually don't require 3/4 of a lane to pass around a blind corner.

It's crazy out there.