Inches, Not Feet

Driving in Taiwan is often done within inches of each other, not feet. This takes some serious getting used to and even those with the most adept skills will occasionally get a small scratch or ding parking or maneuvering in all the narrow places. Thankfully, it is so common place that body work on cars is super cheap and reasonable. That may be why it's pretty much unheard of to leave a note if you ding someone else's car. Learned that one the hard way...

I got this picture taking Aly to school this morning. About 8-10 cars passed this truck on the left while we waited. As far as I could see the truck never actually touched the parked cars on his right, he probably even had an inch or two to spare. 

Driving here has been compared to a video game, and I've found that's pretty accurate. You are always waiting for someone on a bike or scooter to suddenly cross in front of you, cars to pull in front of you, look out! for that construction guy sticking his head out of the man hole with two orange cones out in front to alert oncoming drivers and protect him, wait patiently while the car in front of you does an "illegal" but commonly used U-turn. The list goes on.

But for as crazy as driving is here, I have come to think that it might actually be safer. Here is why. In the States we have rules, we obey those rules. Accidents mostly happen when someone unthinkingly breaks a rule, and the rest of us don't have ample time to react. Like running a red light for example. You start going when the light turns green because, well, the light was green! Never checking if everyone else stopped like they were supposed to.

In Taiwan you are always on alert. You truly can do nothing else but concentrate on driving (and occasionally shout at your kiddos to keep their hands to themselves) because where you are driving is a constantly changing scene of unexpected obstacles. But because everyone is paying attention (mostly) we all work around each other and traffic moves around obstacles easily like a river flowing around a large rock. I swear I drive at least a fifth of the time on the wrong side of the road, just going around buses, people double parked etc.

Anyway, my friends and I were recently discussing how nice it will be when we go home this summer to actually be able to relax a little when driving. How crazy is that? I guess it comes down to a matter of offensive vs. defensive, and offensive is just a bit more relaxing :)

Here is a video of a short cut that Nathan and I have termed "THE GAUNTLET". As you watch, keep in mind that this is a "two-way"road and this type of thing is pretty common, as is me telling Nathan he has "Plenty of room, at least X amount of inches". I video'd it out of our sun roof, in case you are wondering, which explains why it's a teeny bit bumpy ;)