Dangerous Driving

It’s a moment I’ve been dreading.  We’re at the airport in Dunedin, in the car rental lot. We find our car, and I head over to the driver’s door, and open it.

There’s no steering wheel.

Then I remember, and my wife and I switch sides and I climb into the little compact we’ve rented for the next 10 days of driving in New Zealand.

Me? Nervous?

We actually got our international driver’s licences for our last trip, but one glance at the traffic in Bangkok and Cambodia convinced us it was best to let others drive, or take the bus. This time, though, we’re in the wilds of New Zealand’s South Island, and if we want to see anything, we have to drive.

Driving here is like in Britain- on the left-hand side (or wrong side, if you’re in North America). That means everything you know is reversed. Easy enough to say, and do on straightaway highways, but becomes a lot more complex in cities. Who has right-of-way (or is that left-of-way)? Which lane is the proper one when turning? How do you pass? And what about the rules of all those traffic circles?

All things I guess I’m going to find out. Or die trying.

And dying is a distinct possibility. Just 10 days before we picked up our rental, a Canadian man and his new wife were in an accident. The wife died, the husband charged with dangerous driving (he had entered the wrong lane). There were 58 tourist fatalities in the last three years, most involving improper driving. And thousands of accidents where tourists were involved.

And let’s throw drunk driving into the mix. A student was charged, the daughter of some prominent lawyers, with hit-and-run just a day or two previously. Student drinking and driving is simply at epidemic levels.  Every day the papers make note of new fatalities, new impaired-driving charges laid.

Sure makes me want to be on the road.

My wife complains at home that I’m an aggressive driver. Here, I’m positively grandmotherly. New Zealanders find a vent for their easygoing nature with their mean-spirited driving. They charge boldly up to the stop line at intersections, making you wonder if they plan to stop; they start parallel parking in your spot even as you pull out; and incredibly, there is no pedestrian-first rule. I have thrown a few fingers already at drivers whizzing by us as we cross the street (and the seeming national sport of jaywalking makes the situation even more volatile).

Travelling the speed limit down the highway? You’ll be passed. And the passing lanes, while few and far between, seem to be informally a half-kilometer longer than the asphalt actually dictates: more than once we’ve seen oncoming drivers forced to pull onto the shoulder to let some tardy driver pass.

A common roadside hazard.

Speed limits are also wildly aggressive. You travel 100km/hr on the thin, twisty two-lane highways that pass for superhighways in the countryside; the limit takes effect just as you leave the borders of a town. Speed limits on curves is about 10k/hr higher than I would expect to see in Canada. And signs warn you to slow down to 20km/hr when passing a stopped school bus!

Utter insanity.

Thankfully, I got a priceless piece of advice just two days into our travels.  And it came from a movie- The Fastest Indian- by coincidence a movie about a New Zealander. “This is true around the world,” a character tells Anthony Hopkins, playing the lead role. “The driver is always in the centre of the road. If you are not on the centre line, you’re in the wrong lane.”

Sounds simple, but it grounded me, made for an easy check every time I was planning my next right-hand turn.

So every moment driving I am concentrating, focussing on the rules and what could happen next. It actually makes you a much better driver. No wandering attention, no rubbernecking. After 10 days I was getting the hang of it. Only pulled into the wrong lane twice, and that was at the start of a day trip, in our sleepy little town.  Before too long, I even tried passing somebody who had the nerve of going 5k/hr below the speed limit.

And school kids? Fuck ‘em. They want to live, they better look both ways.