Rules of the Road...

If I or someone I know does not get hit by a moving vehicle while I’m here in Tanzania I will be incredibly impressed.It’s amazing how much I took for granted the basic principle of rules of the road.  Pass on the left, use your turn signals, stop at stop signs, pedestrian have the right of way...and so on.  Surprisingly even with the lack of regulations (I’ve only ever seen a police office watching a road twice, one who was creating a toll..i.e. making the taxi drivers bribe their way through... on the way to the snorkeling adventure, and when the President of Tanzania was in Bagamoyo) I have only seen one accident.  But here are some of the more interesting sights I’ve seen regarding the road...

Piki pikis (motorcycles) are perfectly good mini-vans and pick-up trucks.  I’ve seen a father riding with his wife and two children on a piki piki.  Mom sits sideways on the back with one little one in front of her, Dad sits in front of him, and the baby (maybe 2 years old) sits in the front with its hands on the handle bars looking like he’s driving.  I have also seen a piki piki carrying a load of 2x4s that would definitely need a pick up back home.

While sitting in a traffic jam in Dar, I saw several dala dalas (public buses) just turn and drive over to the sidewalk (dirt path where people and stands are walking/sitting although I use sidewalk here very loosely) and start making their way toward their destination that way.  It caused mayhem for a couple of seconds before the traffic jam just extended to the sidewalk and now instead of a two lane standstill we had a three lane standstill.

Pedestrians never have the right of way.  Unless you are willing to be run over (and I have now come close to being clipped by the mirrors of piki pikis and almost had my toes run over by a dala dala) it is your job as the pedestrian to get out of the way...even if you think you’re on the “sidewalk.”

While taking a dala dala home from Dar one weekend my friend Lauren were given seats on the dashboard of the bus and the driver had to keep craning his neck to attempt to see his mirror around us.

I would recruit stunt motorcycle drivers from Tanzania, they have no fear and they never go slower than 50 miles an hour (even through the heart of town.)