I’m on a side trip now and thoroughly enjoyed the interstate,
even though the scenery on I-10 isn’t exactly spectacular. Part of the
enjoyment, I think, was that there aren’t any red lights on the interstate.
To get to my parents’ house – I guess now “my mom’s house” –
you have to take one of the main artery roads in Tallahassee and drive a
stretch. The “truck route,” as longtime Tallahasseeans call it, is a
heavily-traveled road most hours of the day. And my mom’s house entails several
left turns.
There aren’t left turns in Turkey. There aren’t really
stoplights at all, really. There are a few, but mostly there are crazy
intersections and mirrors, with some roundabouts thrown in. On day, walking to
work with a colleague, we got to the five-way intersection that I walked by
every day, and he looked me dead in the eye and said: “I’m going to die at this
intersection.” There were a couple of mirrors – the intersections are totally
blind so without the mirrors it would be a total leap of faith – but that was
all. No stop lights, no stop signs. Basically, the main rule, as much as there
is one, is “first come, first serve.”
It’s chaotic, but once you look deeper, it’s controlled
chaos. Well, sort of. There are rule of thumb – but not really a rule – is that
bigger ones have the right of way. “Bigger” can mean either cars or balls.
| Istanbul traffic. It makes sense in its own way. Photo from: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSJstVmD6fBp_3ylMgQ3ppzvdBw5w9RFw1mlt8g8RjebgVKdjNq |
I figured this out driving through that intersection. There
were four roads intersecting, but not in a star shape. There was a “main” road,
or main road-ish thing, so coming from both directions, then two roads coming
off diagonally; you turned one way and there was another road immediately
there; it was impossible to tell which one people were aiming for. (Apparently,
blinkers are illegal in Turkey.) To top it off, there was a large apartment
building with a driveway there.
Taking a taxi home from one direction, I’d have to give the
direction, “right,” and then “straight, no straight right, but not that
straight right.” The turn was some kind of geometric angle gone wrong, but I
usually got it right.
And walking was frightening, but driving no less so. With no
stop signs, I felt back on my American mentality, which is, again, wrong in
Turkey. In America, people don’t have “the right of way.” Laws, at least in
Florida, are written not as “this person has the right of way” but “In this
circumstance, this person yields the right of way.”
So silly me, I get to the main “T” of that intersection
(meaning I’ve held my breath past one of the roads and the driveway) and to me,
I’m on a secondary road approaching a main-ish road, so the main-ish road people
have the right of way. However, in Turkey, if I get there first, I am expected
to go first. This seemed to me to be even in the case where there were cars
coming – quickly, I should add – from both directions. Since I was trying to
turn left, this would mean, in America, I have a little wait in front of me
before I can turn, because both those guys – as well as the guy behind one of
those guys – should have the right of way.
But in Turkey, this is not the case. If you hesitate, like I
did, the guy behind you will get pissed off but not honk. Honking is only done
when you have no other move, like when you really are at a stoplight and it
turns green. In that instance, even if you’re 17 cars back, the Turkish rule is
that you lay on the horn immediately, as you’re powerless to do anything else.
But if you’re at an intersection and some let-me-yield-the-right-of-way-to-these-two-fast-moving-cars-coming-at-me
idiot, the correct thing to do is swerve around the idiot and turn in front of
him/her in front of the fast-moving car(s).
As a result of this, although I miss Istanbul, I do not miss
driving in Istanbul. However, you gotta say, if those rules work, there’s something
to them.
The first come, first serve method would save me a lot of
time on the way to my mom’s house. The heavily-trafficked artery is full of
left turns, and since there’s so much traffic, you have to sit and wait forever
on the green left turn arrow.
Probably 20 percent of my home leave has been sitting at left
turn arrows stuck on red. I don’t understand it. I get there first, but I have
to sit and wait for minutes on end. Sometimes as I drive up, I can see the darn
red left turn arrow from afar and by the time I get there, it’s still red and I
still have to sit and wait. It’s especially aggravating at the little tiny crossroads,
like the last one I have to cross, because it takes forever for enough cars to
pile up to register that it’s time for the light to change.
We can learn from Turkey on this one. First come, first serve,
biggest balls win.
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