Driving in Costa Rica

I was checking my stats for the day and there was quite a spike in readership. That can mean only one of two things, either ElCapitan or Army of Mom plugged me in their blog post of the day.

It was El Cap. Once again railing about the driving habits of Los hispanicos de Tejas. He asked a question that I am now going to answer. How are the Drivers in Latin America, well in Costa Rica anyway?

There are only 2 things more dangerous than driving in Costa Rica. They are in no particular order; jaguar testicle thumping and French kissing a Fer-De_Lance. There are traffic laws here, but no police are assigned to enforce them. People speed, pass on the right, on the left, on the sidewalk. They never stop for stop signs and rarely for stop lights. There seem to be no rules on what size vehicle can be on what kind of road. I have seen 18 wheelers go down my street (residential). they were no doubt lost. I have nicknames for the bus drivers that work the routes I ride regularly. Parnelli Jones, Slowpoke Rodiguez, Middle of the Road Manuel, and the most dangerous one... Foster Brooks Cuervo.

Examples of crazy stuff I have witnessed:

A bus stops on a two lane road to let off passengers. cars coming both in front of and behind the bus will try and use that other lane to get by. Other cars will try and pass on the sidewalk if there is room and no open storm sewer.

Two male drivers will not under any circumstances yeild to one another. I was on a bus and another bus was beside us. There was a car double parked making only enough room for one bus to pass at a time. We sit there for (I timed it) 8 minutes until the driver of the double parked car moved because neither driver would let the other one go first. And the whole time both bus drivers were blowing their horns and so were about 300 cars behind us.

Add to this that the street maintence here is nonexistent. Down the street from where I live that is a pot hole that has been there so long there is now a 10ft tree growing out of it. Diameter of the trunk at the base is about 6-8 inches at least. People just go around it None of the streets are named and none of the houses have numbers on them. So no one really knows for sure where they are going half the time.

Let's say there is a wreck. Law requires that neither car can be moved, not even off the Auto Pista (freeway) until the police investigate and all the involved insurance companies adjusters finish all the paper work.

That is why I ride the bus and will never own a car here. And you are not even safe in a parking lot or your garage. The major pastimes in Costa Rica are soccer and car theft.