He was actually on a bicycle and it was totally his fault. He zoomed right into a blind intersection and a cop car was coming at a right angle to him. BAM! Luckily for the bicyclist, the cop wasn’t going very fast. The guy that got hit walked away, if it had been some of our worse drivers in the area that like to zoom up and down the narrow streets, he’d probably have been killed. The traffic here is chaotic, you really have to watch what you’re doing, but it doesn’t always help. Some of the blogs I like have written about how promising “emergent” traffic patterns are, that is traffic patterns made by the people in the traffic as opposed to following some order that is forced on them. It’s an interesting theory, but totally off base. There are some instances where order directed from the top down is beneficial, and traffic is one of them. Everything is much slower here due to the constant haggling for position in lanes and especially at intersections. It takes almost 20 minutes to go someplace that might take less than ten in DC and that’s with far fewer cars. In addition, accidents are FAR more common here. There isn’t a car here that isn’t dented, scratched, or otherwise scarred from the traffic. I have witnessed or been involved in 5 different fender benders and now a hit bicyclist in the last 5 months here in Sana’a. That’s more than I ever saw or was involved in in 8 years in the DC area! The traffic in DC is much faster, there are many more cars (probably by a factor of 3) and I was driving EVERY DAY back home. One potential benefit to the traffic “system” here is that there probably are fewer serious injuries or deaths per accident due to the slower speeds, but I’m not sure if that is evened out by the sheer number of accidents that occur here. Emergent phenomena are fascinating, but traffic needs a firm hand to make it safe.
Isaac