Dodgems on the Road

Our driver drove the wrong way around a roundabout last night. I wish I could say that was an anomaly but, sadly, it was not. Our driver, like most people in Thailand, just does not know how to drive. For the first few months, he drove like a rally car driver, accelerating furiously, then braking suddenly, dodging in and out of lanes. Anyone with any kind of heart problem would have been well advised to avoid getting in the car with him. Then, either a lot of people complained about their drivers or senior management realised that if they didn't step in they'd lose half their work force to RTAs, as the company decided to send all the drivers on a road safety course. Our driver came back a changed man. Unfortunately, he now operates at the other extreme; driving painfully slowly. It's quite embarrassing when you're overtaken by an old man on one of those motorised mobility buggies, especially when he beeps you out of the way first. Occasionally his slow driving can actually be quite dangerous, such as when he wants to turn right across a lane of traffic coming towards us. He waits until he judges the gap to be big enough - which, if he manoeuvred properly, it would be - and then pulls out so slowly that, 9 times out of 10, the vehicle approaching us has to brake and wait for him to cross. I don't know which emotion is stronger - my fear of getting rammed into by the oncoming vehicle (because of course, these manoeuvres put me in far more danger than the driver sitting on the other side of the car) or my acute embarrassment at our car almost causing an accident through sheer stupidity!

The problem is that people just aren't taught properly here. The driving test is a joke, and that's if you even take it at all. Usually, a few hundred baht in the back pocket of the relevant person will do it. I expect our driver went the wrong way around the roundabout because he didn't even realise what it was, or perhaps thought that it was just a suggestion to drive clockwise. After all, our turning was all the way round to the right, it was far quicker just to pull in without going all the way round! At least he indicated I suppose, most drivers here don't.