Is there a driver testing centre in Babel? There probably is not. It is inconceivable that there could be so many bad drivers in an area where people have to prove they can drive before getting a driver’s license.
This is the only city in the world, in personal experience, where people simply drive badly. There are cities where people drive fast. Paris, Rome, Tokyo come to mind as places where the drivers are routinely driving too fast. What you have to do is blend in with them and enjoy the race. It’s harrowing and also exhilarating.
There are also the cities that will never give another driver a break. New York and Toronto come to mind. If there is a spare inch in the traffic jam in those cities three cars will fight for it. “Never give a sucker a break” is the motto in those cities.
But in Babel, they just drive badly. They even park badly. Traffic stopped on Dunlop Street the other day so that everyone could watch a Babelite try to parallel park. This guy is driving a very new and very expensive Mercedes and he is trying something that very few people in Babel have ever mastered. Finally, he gave up and the normal lurch, stop and go of Dunlop was restored.
They cannot even park between the lines. We bought a new car last year and the other day the dealer gave us an estimate of about $2000 to remove all the dings, cracks and bangs it has had done to it in shopping plaza parking lots. Maybe that is why most Babelites park diagonally across two parking spaces. Bet they still get dinged!
Part of the blame has to be placed on the city and its so-called traffic engineers. This is the only city in Ontario where we seem to hate visitors. A tourist is a driver who is lost. No street has the same name for more than two blocks, No provincial highways are marked. Major roads go from two lane to four lane and back to two lane quite indiscriminately. (This seems to cater to the Babel drivers who all seem to hate driving in any curb lane—but, for goodness sake, do not pass them on the right or left: they will think you want to race.)
As this is written, the author is looking out his den window onto the intersections of Lakeshore and Tiffin and the intersection of Bradford, Essa, Lakeshore and Tiffin (yes, it is two different intersections). After getting a detailed explanation for the design of these intersections and how the engineers believe they have solved all the problems, I can state from daily observation of the intersections that they might not be functioning as planned. The combination of dreadful Babel drivers and lost tourists will trump a highly trained engineer any day.
For example, the engineers posited that if you make it difficult to make a right turn from the two-lane Lakeshore to the Lakeshore, drivers will use the wide four lanes of Bradford to go from south to north in the city. It is sad to report that despite the engineers’ planning, the traffic is still clogged on the Lakeshore and you can have a tea party in the middle of Bradford and nobody will notice.
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