We recently took a short trip back to Canada to visit friends and family and it really reminded me of how different the experience of driving is there vs. her in Mexico.
In Mexico, most traffic rules aren’t enforced. Cops do pull people over, but it seems to be very irregular. So people speed, change lanes without signaling and do all sorts of stuff you’d never see on the roads in Canada.
This can take some time to get used to. The stereotype is that Canadians are kind and nice, but when it comes to breaking the rules of the road, people in Canada get upset quickly.
In Mexico, the average driver is a lot more chill. They aren’t stressed if someone cuts in front of them when merging or if someone moves across two lanes to exit from the highway.
It feels a lot more chaotic driving around day to day, but there is actually a lot more trust between drivers here. There has to be because often there are no merge lanes or there are no passing lanes. So you trust that other cars see you and react.
The hardest thing to get used to is the way people drive on two-lane roads out of the city. When it’s one lane each way the custom is that you drive as much on the shoulder as possible so that faster cars can go around you. If you’re on an 80kph road and you’re driving 80, you might be half on the shoulder and when a car driving 100kph comes up behind you they immediately go around. The car going the other direction pulls over to the shoulder and everyone continues on their way.
It is kind of odd to see the first time, but once you get used to it, it actually makes driving a lot smoother.
Back in Canada this summer we spend hours stuck behind R.V.s on two-lane highways, and I couldn’t help but think how much nicer it would be if we were driving like they do in Mexico.
There are dozens more small differences, but the big change in pattern as a driver is that this is a much more emergent culture of driving. In Canada, everyone is preoccupied with the rules, and with good reason because there are cops lurking all over the highway ready to give out expensive fines.
In Mexico, there are some places where there is no road test to get your license. You just go in sign up and you’re ready to roll. So you learn how to drive, not from a manual and memorizing the top-down rulebook, but instead by interacting with others and learning from experience.
I can’t speak to the differences in safety, but from experience day to day as a driver, I can say that I now prefer driving here.
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