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San Antonio Express-News
12 de octubre de 1997
©1997: Suzanne Cane y Olvera

ROAD RAGE TAKES ON NEW MEANING
WHEN DRIVING IN MEXICO CITY

Recently, three young people in the state of Florida were sentenced to fifteen years in prison for removing a stop sign that resulted in a fatal crash. Had the sign been there, the argument goes, the victims would not have died.

This would not have happened in Mexico - not because stop signs are cemented into the ground - not because no one in Mexico would ever commit such a foul act - not because the forces of corruption would somehow let the vandals off the hook. Rather, it has to do with disorganization and a lack of trust - not qualities we aim at in our daily lives, but useful at times, nevertheless.

Almost all American tourists who visit Mexico City prefer taxies to rental cars. One experience with driving habits south of the border is usually all it takes to scare them away from behind the wheel.

It seems one has to be born into the system to understand how it works and not get killed in the process. (Experience with driving New York or Rome, however, does qualify as an adequate substitute!) A right turn from the left lane? And with no more serious punishment than a bit of purple prose from an anonymous car window? Cutting across two lanes to make it in time for the exit ramp?

The physical characteristics of some roads in Mexico do not help matters either. Where else might one find a freeway with an exit ramp that comes immediately before the entrance ramp, forcing the cars getting one and off to cross paths within inches of each other? Good training for future bull fighters? Indeed, he who does not have the intestinal fortitude to cross through a solid line of fairly rapidly moving cars will get nowhere in life. He won't even get home! He may very well find himself going around in circles until he runs out of gas!

An important element of driving etiquette in Mexico City has to do with stopping for red lights. This is not a problem in the United States. You see a red light, and you stop. It's automatic. In Mexico, it is not quite that simple. Certain mental calculations must be made first. You have to consider whether the cars with the green light have already begun to move, or whether you still have time to get through the intersection. This is no easy thing; a knowledge of mathematics and physics is definitely helpful.

One universal law does hold where red lights are concerned: Always stop for the red light - if the car in front of you has already stopped for the red light!
Parking can be fun, too. When my son was only thirteen years old, we drove all the way from Mexico City to New York. The four days in the car were not difficult. The problem was what to do with the car once we got there. Unless we spent a fortune on parking lots, we were trapped.

My son had a hard time dealing with this. He could accept the concept of the fire hydrant (even though there aren't any in Mexico City) and garage entrances (at home, proprietors seem to get their jollies from flattening the tires of trespassing vehicles) - but not being able to park beyond the building line? That made no sense to him. People were supposed to get run over as soon as they stepped off the curb, weren't they?! By the time the poor frustrated boy thought of parking on the side walk a la mexicana, he seemed to have gotten the idea that things were quite different in the American driving world.

Actually, parking in Mexico City has become more civilized lately. Parking meters have come into widespread use in commercial areas, and motorists do not even try to cripple them by injecting glue into the slots - as really did happen the first time the city government experimented with them. Maybe we are slowing down after all.
Perhaps, the most widely used device in Mexico to get people to slow down is the tope, or the speed bump. It works wonders. Unless you really hate your car and want to kill it, you do have to slow down. Not treating a speed bump with proper respect may break not only your axle, but your head as well. The good thing, though, is that the heads of others are saved from your carelessness.

One is forced to drive defensively in Mexico. It is a simple matter of survival. An American colleague of mine, who had lived in Mexico for more than twenty years, moved to Texas and had to take the test for her driver's license. She failed. The reason? Slowing down at the corners along a street with the right of way. It's an easy mistake to make when you've been driving for a long time in Mexico, where you never expect anyone to slow down or stop when he is supposed to. He probably will, but you don't want to chance it.

Had that stop sign in Florida been removed from a street corner in Mexico City, it is unlikely that there would have been an accident - perhaps, an epithet or two from another driver, but not an accident.

In this day and age when so many of us cannot trust even the people we are married to (why else a fifty percent divorce rate?), what makes us think that we can trust people we don't even know, people we can't even see from around a corner? Might the person crossing our path, in that possibly deadly weapon known as a car, be distracted? Might he be drunk? How can we know?
It's like making excuses for not practicing safe sex, Are we willing to take that kind of chance?