Driving is shall I say, ‘an experience’ here in Nigeria. In the US rules of the road are just that… rules of the road. Here the major rule seems to be “if you can do it without dying do it!”
Highway driving is one challenge. One road was a two-car-wide roadway in each direction with numerous pot-holes (some of which can swallow a car!). There are no lane markers, but that wouldn’t matter anyway. A steady stream of vehicles fill the road but it isn’t traffic. You are tooling along at 120-140 kph (kilometers/hr, 75-87 mph) and you see a truck ahead in the left lane traveling maybe 50 kph. You re on its back in no time, swerve to the right but there is a slow moving car in that lane that the truck is ‘passing’… what do you do?
1. slow and wait for truck to pass?
2. veer off the road and around the truck or car?
3. get on the tail of the truck and cut ahead of the car ASAP
Answer: #3, hang close to the truck and then as soon as there is an opening sweep in front of the car all the while honking your horn. An alternate approach might be to honk horn and get both cars to move a bit to the outside of the roadway and create a “3rd” lane to pass both.
It starts to rain and then pour your windshield wipers are working but they are old so your windshield is streaky at best, how do you respond? I’ll just tell you the answer… you keep going slipping from left to right lane as needed to pass vehicles. There is no such rule as slow moving vehicles keep right. Slow moving vehicles stay I whatever lane they like forcing traffic to continually slide from lane to lane to pass them.
Traffic… now this is a particular challenge. What seems to be the rule is make as many lanes as the roadway and sides of the road allow… In one particular stretch of supposedly 3 lane road, we were in snarling traffic exacerbated by the fact that there were at least 6 and quite possibly 7 self-created lanes with cars often less than an inch apart!
Driving on a divided highway… ooops I missed my turn, what do you do?
1. stop, put car in reverse and back up in the highway until you can make your turn?
2. drive across the grass medium and get on the highway in the other direction, drive past the turn you missed and then drive across the medium again and make the turn you missed?
3. travel on until the next exit get back on the highway in the opposite direction and get of at your turn?
Answer: #1… just stop and back up whether it is 100 feet or 2000 feet, people will go around you.
Lastly, remember when passing always blow your horn… after all you might be on the right or the left and the vehicle may not have any rear or side view mirrors to see you….
I hope you enjoyed your first lesson of driving in Nigeria. Yee Haa!
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