Taxi!

I am still frequently asked if I miss my job overseas or if I am glad to be home safe and sound. The answer to both is a qualitative “yes.” I miss friends and co-workers that I spent a lot of time with, but I’m very glad to be home. “Safe” is a relative term and I’ve been in a lot more dangerous places here in the USA than I ever was in Saudi Arabia or the Persian Gulf area in general. However, the closest to death I’ve ever been and the most anxious times I’ve ever experienced have almost always been on the road.

Growing up in the rural Midwest we are familiar with traffic accidents and the toll they take, but for the most part people are law abiding and practice what we call in driver’s ed. “defensive driving.” In many urban areas and practically everywhere else in the world, people practice “offensive driving.” In rich countries like the USA, the roads are pretty good, most everyone is trained, the traffic laws are enforced and the percent of deaths or injury to miles driven or per capita are pretty low. In poorer countries almost none of this applies and if you are involved in any kind of accident, emergency care is slow and often inadequate.

My first experience with real terror came in my first visit to a foreign country and my first taxi ride in the city of Santo Domingo. The driver raced through town with only blind intersections in the dark with his lights out (I don’t know why, maybe to save the battery?) going through stop lights and stop signs and honking to warn other vehicles (I guess) that he had no intention of stopping. I was later told that the only real law enforcement was if there was a traffic accident he might go to jail if he ran into someone important. Otherwise it was survival of the fittest (or at least the luckiest).

In Nigeria we weren’t allowed to drive and I was supposed to be leaving the guest house to come home and there were no drivers. One of the guest house workers told me he would drive me to the airport, so I accepted his offer – I was highly motivated. He had the car keys. Once on the road, unable to find the lights (it was early morning), driving on both sides of the road although primarily down the middle and narrowly missing disaster nearly every time another vehicle approached, I finally asked if he knew how to drive. He told me “no,” but had seen it done many times before.

In Brazil, the home of Ayrton Senna and many other famous Formula 1 drivers, I found that the taxi drivers were all highly skilled, fearless and fast. This was probably scarier than driving with someone who hadn’t a clue how to drive a car because everyone was driving this way in heavy traffic. No matter how many lanes of traffic there were a Brazilian taxi driver would use anything and everything available including the sidewalk or median or the ditch or whatever. Right of way belonged to the vehicle whose bumper was 2 inches in front of vehicles traveling the same direction and to the one with the most nerve going in opposite directions. Lane changes were fast and always totally unexpected. In my estimation any Rio taxi driver could easily win every NASCAR event.

In Newfoundland, Canada drivers have to drive slowly during rutting season not because of weather or poor roads, but because a collision with a moose is almost always fatal. In Saudi Arabia you seldom saw road kill, but the worst traffic accident I ever saw was between a truck and a camel. Neither looked very good shape and camels never show proper traffic signals or reflective material, so in poor visibility the danger was real and more common than one would hope.

The moral of the story goes something like this: If you work in the oil or mining industry your best chance of dying or being injured is getting to and from work. The chances of dying as a result of terrorist attack is about equal to being struck by lightning and according to the WHO traffic accidents rank #11 on the risk list (heart disease is #1). If you must travel your odds are best if you take public transportation. Prayer is about the only deterrent.

(by Marc Adami, Guest Columnist)