| Driving in Greece |
[Sep. 8th, 2008|08:27 pm] |
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Eugenia and I were in Greece last month for a quick vacation. I was there for a week, and I took a rental car in Athens and we drove home (which is approximately a 5-hour drive from Athens). While there we also drove around a fair bit, and I drove a total of about 750 miles / 1200 km in a week.
Driving in Greece is interesting. In a nutshell, drivers there have no respect for speed limits or for any lines or lanes that might be painted on the pavement. And the truth is, I understand why they do it. I don't like it, but I understand it: on most roads, there are few spots where it's possible to pass, and even fewer where it's possible and legal to pass. There are however quite a few trucks, which tend to drive slowly on open stretches of road, and even slower in mountainous areas, but definitely far above the limit in villages. Driving at the speed limit in villages means falling behind trucks, which in turns means missing opportunities to pass, and if you slow down while traffic is dense, other cars will pass you, such that you never even have an opportunity to pass the truck at all. The part that I dislike is that no matter what driving strategy you pick, something will be stressful: if you don't slow down in villages, you've got to be extremely careful since you're going to be driving 50 or 60 mph in a 30 mph village, with all the risks of accidents that come with such speed. On the other hand if you do slow down, other cars will pile up behind you and pass you, which is just about as dangerous.
On larger highways that aren't quite freeways, like e.g. the road from Korinthos to Patra along the northern cost of Peloponnese, things aren't much better. Trucks do drive at the speed limit and there are no villages, so it all sounds like things should be smooth, but it's still a mess. The road is paved such that there's a single marked (very) wide lane in each direction, along with a shoulder that's not paved nearly as well and is just wide enough for one car, and a thick "do not pass" line painted down the center. The thing is, drivers have no respect for the marked lanes. The "normal" driving pattern is for cars and trucks to drive halfway onto the paved shoulder, which leaves enough space in the middle for one car or truck to pass in one direction by going halfway across the center line. Squeezing a bit more, you could have truck on one side and a car on the other side, both driving well onto the shoulder, each being passed by a car. Worse, you could do the same with two trucks each being passed by a car the same time, where things get tight (and, as you can imagine, it gets tighter as you replace more cars with trucks, though at that point you're getting dangerously close to adding yet another of those small monuments that dot the sides of the roads every few miles, which are added by relatives when someone dies in a car accident. Once again there's no good way to drive on such a road: close to the center you're expected to drive about 20 mph / 30 kph above the limit and pass whenever it seems remotely possible, which means that you have to be constantly careful about traffic ahead. Halfway onto the shoulder you have to be very careful about traffic coming behind you as faster cars fully expect you to pull further onto the shoulder when they pass you. Fully onto the shoulder you've got to be extremely careful about the state of the road ahead, since there are commonly shrubs that grow right right over the edge of the road, and every now and then a bad pothole or a bad bridge joint will rattle the car, or (much worse) a narrower bridge will suddenly shrink the shoulder by a foot or two with very little warning.
Ultimately, though, the part that shocked me most about driving in Greece was when I drove my sister-in-law and her 8-month-old baby from her parents' place back to her home, when it was already quite dark. She insisted that she'd ride in the back seat without any seatbelt, holding her baby in her arms. Apparently her doctor had told her that a baby's spine needed such support to resist the shock of an accident. I didn't want to argue, but a the same time I was petrified in fear at the thought of what would happen in case of a crash: a crash at 50 mph / 80 kph is about equivalent to a free fall from about 25 m / 80 ft. If I crashed at that speed, my sister-in-law's baby would come fatally crashing into the back of the passenger seat. She wouldn't have much time to grieve, as she'd be unavoidably hurled into the same seat about 10 to 15ms later and the shock would at least knock her unconscious (though honestly it's not clear that she's survive at all). And on top of that I'd have to hope that the seat back of the passenger seat would be able to absorb the impact, since otherwise Eugenia who was riding in front would be in a lot of additional trouble, as if crashing at 50 mph wasn't already a very serious crash already. Just like my sister-in-law later said, I drove slowly on the way back, my brother-in-law usually drives about 75 mph / 120 kph on the same road, while his wife holds their baby in her arms. How about trying to survive a free fall from 55 m / 180 ft and not trying to put all the hopes (however slim they might be at that point) on your side? All right, so I can understand that a layperson wouldn't instinctively recognize or understand that car speeds (and especially highway speeds) are in fact very high speeds - in the quiet comfort of a car, it's easy to get used to the speed. But the fact that a doctor would recommend to hold the baby in one's arms while riding in a car, instead of putting the baby in a good rear-facing child seat, was just shocking. I don't mean any of that personally for my brother-in-law or his wife: like I said, it's quite counter-intuitive that highway speeds result in very violent crashes, so unless you've studied point mechanics to the point where you can apply it to some real-world situations it's hard to imagine that there's much danger, and after all they were just doing what their doctor had said and honestly wouldn't really have any reason to doubt what their doctor would say. I am however angry at their doctor, because making any kind of statement that results in people carrying babies in their arms while riding a car is stupidly and dangerously (and borderline criminally) irresponsible in my opinion. |
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