Walking down the street is a constant hassle here. In addition to the incessant honking and yelling, people seem to have an amazing ability to get in one’s way here. I may have figured out why…
Yemeni people are, by and large, very friendly and go out of their way to be nice to you. You wouldn’t know looking at the streets. Judging by how they drive, you would think that they are the biggest assholes on the planet. There is no flow, nobody seems to care about impeding other people, no one seems to care about improving the general flow of traffic, and the concept of obeying rules so that it benefits everyone is a totally foreign concept. It’s amazing to watch, if there’s a spot open, it is taken. The streets are 2 lanes across, it is common for them to spread out to 7 across while waiting for a light at a wide intersection here. The dabobs routinely use the oncoming lanes in order to get around traffic. I have been in many dabobs where we weren’t even in the nearest oncoming lane, but the far one and the driver had the balls to blow his horn at the oncoming traffic because they are in his way…
It’s really a classic “tragedy of the commons” problem. There is no concept of right of way, or how traffic should flow. If you come to an intersection, you stick your car into the first gap, no matter how many cars you stop or slow down. The basic idea is that they had better take the space before someone else does… Because no one “owns” any of the spaces in front of their car or in any lanes, total chaos is the result.
And it isn’t just cars, the pedestrians use the same technique. They waltz out into whatever space is there and don’t care if they force a dozen cars to stop. Intersections are a great place to congregate and to stop vehicles. It’s that love of filling space that made me think about my walking down the street problem. Inevitably, whenever I want to walk past someone, they drift right into where I am going to walk. Not to avoid anything, not to pass anything, but just to go there. Until now I had chalked it up to their innate ability to piss me off, but I think I see a pattern now. Many people seem to be drawn to open spaces. If you are walking down a sidewalk, many people wander from open space to more open space instead of following an unimpeded straight line. As I go to pass someone, I naturally go towards an open area to walk past them. They drift the same way and inevitably make me mutter many, many “F” bombs as I almost run into them. I’m trying a new technique, and it seems to be working. Now I pass on the tight side and let them wander off into the open area. I’m glad I figured this out, I’ve come very close to shoving someone into traffic as I scream, “Would you get the (hell) out of my way?!” What sometimes seems like a concerted effort to piss me off is usually just an odd (to me) habit. I’m not sure if this tendency points to any other, deeper issues, but my “Milty” sense is tingling (with apologies to both Stan Lee and Milton Freidman).