Giving a Hoot

The mayor of Lima, Peru, has announced that the city will start to impose a $50 fine on anyone honking his or her car horn in downtown Lima. The idea is to reduce unhealthily high decibel levels in the center of the city.

We lived and drove in Lima for more than 3 ½ years. And like the locals, we ended up honking the horn as a regular practice. In Lima, traffic is insane, and honking is a form of language. To drive in the city is to experience the constant chorus of toots and hoots, varying from the polite and concise to the protracted expression of a piece of one’s mind.

There are plenty of traffic laws in Peru, and getting a driver’s license involves not only the written and driving tests but also medical and psychological exams. Yet, you do wonder about the sanity of many LImena drivers. Rules are broken regularly. Though there are traffic cops in Lima, their role seems to be to better snarl traffic at intersections, ignore rule-breakers, or pull people over to collect bribes. The result is a certain degree of automotive anarchy, and the highest per capita death rate from motor vehicle accidents in South America.

I recently discovered a show, produced by the Discovery Channel, which gives a great view of Lima traffic. Called Don’t Drive Here – Lima, it totally captures the craziness associated with driving in Lima. I laughed out loud watching the clips. You can find them here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFRBgLm1WSI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gn9QS50sFAo

Now that we live in Nairobi, people ask me how the traffic compares to the insanity of Lima. 

The only answer I can give is that traffic in Nairobi is crazy, too, but in different ways.

Kenyan drivers are less aggressive by far than their Peruvian counterparts (notwithstanding the message received today from the security service about armed motorcycle-riding robbers). You are not as likely to see them get into fisticuffs over a parking space or to be cut off by someone making a left turn from the far right lane.

Kenyan and Peruvian drivers do have in common a wanton disregard for traffic rules and a tendency to pass on blind curves. They share the ability to make two or more lanes out of one and the opinion that traffic signals are mostly decorative. Also similar is the unwritten rule that the bigger car gets the right of way.

Another common feature is in the menace presented by the small buses called “matatus” here in Kenya and “combis” in Peru. In both countries, their drivers maintain a total disregard for the safety of their passengers or anyone else, and their driving records seem to range from accident-prone to deadly.

Nairobi is less than half the size of Lima in terms of population. Lima is a sprawling metropolis of 10 million people and has a much more elaborate infrastructure of roads. Peru does have laws about emissions standards, and you are supposed to get your vehicle inspected once a year. Somehow, that does not prevent the presence of incredibly beat up vehicles, missing lights and other bits and pieces, and belching black exhaust. You encounter the same problem in Kenya, which seems to lack emission rules and other controls altogether.

To be fair to the municipal government of Lima, they have made big efforts to encourage conversion of cars to natural gas, including all the taxis. Plans are underway to eliminate all the pollution-spewing combis and replace them with natural gas-fueled buses, and the city is slowly building a public transit system. There are even some bike trails and roads that are closed to traffic on Sundays, reserved for cyclists and pedestrians. None of that is happening in Kenya.

Traffic can be heavy and slow in Lima, but it doesn’t compare to the snarled jams you encounter in Nairobi, due to the lack of sufficient roads and absence of public transit. It’s particularly acute near the Central Business District (Nairobi’s downtown) or on the road leading towards Mombasa. A trip to the airport can take 35 minutes – or 3 hours.  And it’s not unusual to sit stuck in traffic for an hour without moving at all.

Even though the condition of the roads is not great in Lima, it’s far worse in Nairobi. There’s a remarkable lack of smooth asphalt. Driving in daylight can be challenging due to car-size potholes, invisible speed bumps, and the general absence of pavement markings or street signs. And that's on the paved roads. Driving at night is even more harrowing thanks to an almost universal lack of functioning streetlights.

But as tricky as driving may be here in Nairobi, one thing you are not likely to encounter is the endless blast of noisy horns so ubiquitous in Lima.

People in Nairobi are generally courteous and soft-spoken. They rarely honk their horns.

In fact, they don’t even use the word, honk. Here, one “hoots,” and only when it’s really necessary.

I could make jokes about comparing hooters and honkers, but I’ll restrain myself.

Suffices to say, I wish Mayor Villaran luck in curbing the honking levels in downtown Lima. As for me, I’ll try to refrain from giving a hoot, except when it really matters.