I drove along Nader today towards Portillo to turn left up onto Uxmal. I had an accomplice with me and we determined that there is indeed a stop sign there located ON Nader going towards Portillo. It is located where that dude sells newspapers. I stopped like am suppose to. And I made it a point to look for stop signs. I saw them on each corner. (I may have missed the one on Nader going towards Coba, but, there should be four streets here. If there are 3 stop signs, logic would dictate that the last stop sign simply flew away. There aren't 3 way stops at 4 way streets.) The problem is not the stop signs, not the rules of a traffic circle, not that it's confusing. The problem is, people don't follow the rules. Technically, I SHOULD be able to drive around that traffic circle for days and days and no one should get in my way because I have the right of way. But they will, and they do, because no body gives a bleep about rules or safety or any of that. Today I was trying to cross a street and someone actually sped up to hit me and honked their horn. Thanks for letting me go buddy!
Rivergirl and Elizabeth RG - Yep. I agree. Liz - The rules are different here. But this intersection is nothing compared to Yaxchilan and Labna, as mentioned earlier. IMHO anyway.
I have to cross that stupid intersection (Nader/Uxmal) everyday on foot. Take my life in my hands everytime! Most cars ignore any stop signs that are there and they most certainly ignore little ole me on foot. Mostly I just RUN!
I have to ask. What the hell is an intuitive intersection? Aren't there just rules that you follow? I thought that if I followed my intuition it was just usually right but that it didn't have anything to do with driving in Mexico.
Of course you are right Liz. I just meant that sometimes an intersection feels like the rules should be a certain way, there are some visual clues (besides signs) which tell you how it's meant to be navigated. When the intersection feels like it has certain rules but actually has others that's when accidents happen. I remember an off-ramp for I-95 in NY that felt like you didn't need to yield at the bottom of the ramp. Something about the way it looked there, you thought you could see everything, you thought it was safe to go through there at 40 mph. But you couldn't, there was another lane merging from under the bridge, and you couldn't see it at all. So people would get creamed there all the time. There were accidents regularly. And every time someone got killed there they would put up another stop sign (instead of re-engineering the intersection). The last time I counted there were 14 stop signs in a row, and people were still ignoring them and getting in wrecks.
Also....accidents happpen here because no one knows how to drive and they don't really care. They don't drive nicely, or safely. It's almost like they want to hit you. My favorite was when a guy almost hit me because he went through a red light on a Sunday afternoon with his family in the car. When he and I finally stopped, he looked at me and laughed. Nice.
Half the drivers on the road here didn't grow up riding in cars, I'm sure of it. And they learned to drive at age 30 or older. Where hubby works only about 40% of people have driver's licenses!! These are federal agents who can't drive! And many of those who do drive learned very late, too late to be any frickin' good at it. Sometimes he asks people there if they can drive and they say "not at night" or they can drive but won't parallel park, or won't drive on the highway. There's one guy who bought a brand new car but won't drive it, and always says he doesn't want it to get dirty if it rains, but the reality is he's scared of it and feels safer on a bus...
is almost 40 too late to learn to drive? Not talking about myself....really... By the way, wasn't this a topic about what people do for fun in Cancun? lol.
