Chile Forum

I have been here a year now and daily as I drive to my teaching job or just along the streets of Santiago to the supermarkets or to visit my wife's family I find myself exploding with rage and anger behind the wheel. Just this morning I saw a man swerve around queuing exit traffic, go through a clear red light and nearly hit 6 pedesatrians on the next zebra crossing. The people had to jump back and the prick (excuse my language) just sped off as quickly as possible.

This is common, I have learned. I have seen it regularly with my own eyes. No rules are respected. None.

Transantiago and micro drivers are absolutely shocking and the majority deserve to be assaulted. I have never witnessed such recklessness on public transport... (heavy, heavy braking, using their mobile phones, no signalling when changing lanes, tailgating, racing other vehicles) ...where do they find these guys?

And as for taxi drivers, i'd be here all day.

Does anyone know how to drive safely in this country?

Respect, safety, mindfulness and intelligence are words that seem not to exist in the Chilean driving dictionary.
But you will certainly find recklessness, arrogance, Formula 1, death-defying, danger, machista, and knucklehead.

I have been told that a driving test in Chile is literally a drive around the block and park up.
5 minutes, all done and dusted.
As long as you don't kill anyone - you get a licence.

Does anyone feel the same?

Sure sounds like Virginia to me

Hughjb wrote:Sure sounds like Virginia to me

Virginia has changed a great deal over the past thirty-five years or so. Before, it was a state typically American in the quality of drivers: calm, respectful, perhaps a bit slow, but careful and safe.

What's changed? Huge influxes of foreigners, legal and illegal, many of whom drive without licenses and many others of whom seem to forget or ignore everything they ought to have learned to have passed a good, comprehensive driving exam'; and native Americans (that is, people actually born in the States) who -- in northern Virginia, no longer culturally part of the whole, and around Richmond and the Roads -- feel themselves increasingly harried and short-tempered as economic and regulatory demands become more and more constrictive.

Wait, that sounds like the whole country today!

Hughjb wrote:Sure sounds like Virginia to me

So true. And I base my experience there when I left the NoVA/DC/MD area in early 2001 after 14 years in the area.

The problems created by illegal immigrants in the United States (about 5% of automotive accidents in my state are caused by illegal immigrants, another 15% by legal immigrants) makes me wonder. Are illegal immigrants to Chile responsible for any significant amount of collisions and other "accidents"? The usual Chilean character has always impressed me as more reliable and honest, even stolid: so irresponsible driving seems very much out of character. Of course, more than one psychologist has observed that many people appear to change in personality and character when behind the wheel.

I do know that some folk in Buenos Aires blame immigrant Bolivians, Peruvians, and Paraguayans for traffic accidents (and for theft and other crime), but I suspect that that blame is exaggerated.

eeuunikkeiexpat wrote:

Hughjb wrote:Sure sounds like Virginia to me

So true. And I base my experience there when I left the NoVA/DC/MD area in early 2001 after 14 years in the area.

Ah . . . you never knew what the state had been like. It was beautiful in many ways. But the same could be said for your own native state, EE.UU.

I don't believe most Peruvian, Bolivian immigrants have the financial resources YET to buy their own vehicles.

I see the disease of bad driving more being caused by (hate to sound classist again) city born and raised chilenos form the lower classes who now have the financial means to purchase cars bringing their uncouth poblacion barrio manners to the streets while behind a wheel. I saw the same phenomenon in the newer apartment structures in Santiago via the government housing subsidio (still speculation on my part till positively confirmed).

My cousins call them "First generation drivers"

eeuunikkeiexpat wrote:. . . . I see the disease of bad driving more being caused by (hate to sound classist again) city born and raised chilenos form the lower classes who now have the financial means to purchase cars bringing their uncouth poblacion barrio manners to the streets while behind a wheel. . . .

This sounds plausible to me. It's what underlies the outsized proportion of accidents caused by legal immigrants, I think -- some Americans joke that these "first-generation drivers" study for the licensing examination by watching demolition derbies.

I suppose the 'first generation' theory has some vaildity although I have to say that I regularly see horrific driving from all sorts of people, across all classes, in all sorts of cheap and luxury cars, 4x4 , trucks, motorbikes, buses, skateboards, etc...

Maybe I'm wrong but I see the fundamental problem is the driving test they have here. It's just too easy to pass.
How is it up there in the states?
In the UK it's pretty difficult and as I remember about 45 minutes long, driving on busy roads, maybe the motorway, reverse parking, 3 point turns in the road, emergency stops, vision test, constant scrutiny of hand position, clutch control, smooth gear changes, checking of all mirrors. Plus the theory test...

If it was like that here or they had to take that kind of test, I think you could instatntly remove 85-90% of Santiago drivers. Maybe more. And save hundreds of lives each year.

And make me a happy man.

Chile is a new rich´s country, always been so, money is earned and lost very fast here, the only nobility in Chile is from "Rey del Mote con Huesillos" and his court.

Agressive behavoir of drivers is the natural reaction to live in a crowded city, poluted and with high cost of living, any place with over 5 million people in the world develop similar beahvoirs. Move to small city and your quality of life will improve a lot either in chile or any other place.

At least when I took my first driving test, just about every 16 year failed the first time. I hardly know any American16 year olds any more, so I don't know how difficult the stateside test is. In PR many drive with no license at all, and get away with it for years and years.

I should´ve put Santiago in the title, not Chile - because that's unfair to all the people in other regions and cities.

Talking about big cities all around the world, I've driven in and around London (a city of God knows how many millions) and people are very respectful of road rules and very corteous.

Maybe it's just the orderliness I miss the most, after 13 months I still haven´t adjusted to life out here .... I'm doing okay with Chilenismos, though, Cachai? Ke pucha, te tinka, yapo, nacalapirinaca, tiki taka, pura cuestiones, vendiendo la apumada, and my favourites... LizTaylor and Cómo estadio?

Never a dull moment out here.

jgb78uk wrote:.... I'm doing okay with Chilenismos, though, Cachai? Ke pucha, te tinka, yapo, nacalapirinaca, tiki taka, pura cuestiones, vendiendo la apumada, and my favourites... LizTaylor and Cómo estadio? . . . .

I'm impressed. You know more than I do, and I have Chilean kith and kin!

I have never tried to drive in Chile because I don't like to drive anywhere if it can be avoided. However, as an easily annoyed pedestrian (in Chicago I have been known to kick cars or pound on windows), my impression has been fairly favorable. They are much more likely to yield to pedestrians than in Chicago. As a comparison, my French professor once said that there is no expression in French for "road rage" because that is the normal condition for French drivers. Complaints about bad driving seem universal.