Driving in South Africa (or Why I Might Not Make it Back to the U.S.)

Each time I leave Kruger to go shopping for supplies, visit Allison, etc. it is an experiment in suicidal tendencies as I confront my fellow drivers. We all complain about the traffic/drivers in our home towns. Atlanta drivers don’t use turn signals, speed, talk on cell phones, etc. However, the main difference between the US and here, Atlanta drivers don’t pass you around blind curves while going 20mph over the speed limit and playing chicken with a tour bus. That my friend is South African driving.

The road rules are usually mere suggestions. You can stop if you wish but its not really necessary. The no passing lines are really only if you don’t feel like passing…if you do, by all means go ahead and run the guy in front of you off the road as you duck in just before the oncoming traffic smashes you to bits. To top it off, the speed limits here are ridiculous. On a good two-lane road the speed limit is 120kph, that’s 75mph to you and me. Imagine driving 75 on your standard two-lane state highway. Plus, the cops here can’t really give you a ticket unless you are going over 10kph faster than the speed limit, so the functional speed limit is actually 130kph or 81mph. That’s really freakin’ fast and its not uncommon for people to pass you easily going 140 or more. Plus you have to do all this while driving on the wrong side of the vehicle and shifting with the wrong hand. Luckily the pedals aren’t backwards or I wouldn’t have lasted this long.

One of the best ideas here though is that the two-lane roads are really three lanes wide because both sides have very large, paved shoulders. So to pass people, the person in front pulls over slightly into the shoulder while you pull slightly into oncoming traffic. This happens regardless of if there is oncoming traffic or not, and you just hope the guy coming the other way pulls far enough onto his shoulder so that you can pass three-abreast on the road. Its often closer than I’d wish. The peril here is that you could be doing this over a slight rise and there could be a group of people on the should over the rise waiting on the bus, or a cow being a stupid cow, or a herd of goats lazing between eating tin cans, or use your imagination and you will probably see it on the roadsides here (like men peeing, they rarely hide in the bushes but just do their thing right on the side of the road in full view of all passersby).

So if I am to die while here, it won’t be from a lion gnawing my face off or a mauling by a black rhino. Its going to be because I drove my car through a herd of goats while someone passed me going uphill around a blind curve into oncoming traffic during a driving rainstorm.