Riding around in Cebu is quite the experience. Once you get past the initial terror involved, it is entertaining. Though the fear never dissipates completely, daily, utterly miraculous avoidance of potentially catastrophic incidents serves to habituate or at least anesthetize one to the real potential of collision. The first couple weeks I puckered up something fierce at every crazy near loss of life, but now I don’t even blink when a jeepney loaded with passengers whips into the intersection or a motor scooter veers into our path. Which happens quite often. Cebu has few stoplights but plenty of intersections, few crosswalks but lots of pedestrians, a galaxy of vehicle shapes and sizes, and more than enough crazy drivers to pilot them on what range from pockmarked one and a half lane dirt tracks serpentining through semi-rural areas and slums to heavily crowded urban streets whose narrow shoulders hardly contain the foot, vehicle, and commercial traffic spilling over like clogged gutters in a rainstorm. Don’t get me started on what the roads look like when there actually is a rainstorm.
From what I can tell, the two most important components of driving in this town are a functioning horn and a great clanking pair of brass balls. Merging, changing lanes, and bulling a path through crowded, unregulated intersections are all done by sheer force of will and guts. Crossing intersections involves choosing a line and sticking to it in a game of chicken played at ninety degree angles with other drivers trying to cross from the left and right without the use of brakes, much less traffic signals. Add pedestrians and a slew of motor scooters weaving through infinitesimally small, constantly shifting gaps and you get the idea.
No sexist offense meant with the brass balls comment, and quite accurate, as I have seen extremely few women driving here, maybe one in a hundred drivers. I don’t know if I am seeing an accurate cross section and I have no desire to make broad sweeping generalizations, but the drivers in Cebu seem to be almost all men. You’d think it was a testosterone thing, and there is a certain amount of that. Driving here is a series of fearlessly foolhardy acts performed for fleeting temporary gain and personal gratification: testosterone in a nutshell.
That’s where the testosterone factor ends though, because here’s the astounding part: there’s no road rage. None. The angriest gesture I’ve witnessed on the road is a horn blast lasting more than half a second. Horns are in constant use, and mean many things: “Hey, I’m over here so don’t merge into me,” “I’m passing you,” “OK pass me,” “Thank you for letting me pass you,” You’re welcome,” and so on, but almost never, “Screw you for cutting me off,” or whatever insane maneuver is occurring.
And folks do indeed pull some of the craziest moves I’ve ever seen on the roads here. Inconveniently placed median or ramp between you your destination, forcing you to shoot a U and backtrack? Nonsense! Cross into the oncoming lanes and drive to your destination, against traffic, on the shoulder. Oh, you do want to shoot that U? By all means, even if it is against busy oncoming traffic and requires a five point turn that will stall all four lanes of a two way, four lane road. That oncoming traffic is going to stop, right? Right? I really hope so, seeing as to how I’m riding in the van’s crumple zone if we get broadsided. Go up the wrong ramp or cross street? Throw that thing in reverse! Back up to where you started and try again. I’m not kidding, I’ve seen it all.
The point is, other drivers will stop for you if you nose into the gaps and, in essence, insist. The amazing part is that they will do it graciously, patiently, and stoically. No expressions of exasperation such as yelling, rude gestures, or even a roll of the eyes. No grudge braking or cutting you off a few miles down the way to get even. No honking, other than maybe a short beep to say, “Sure, pass me on the uphill side of this two lane bridge even though you can’t see the oncoming traffic and I have nowhere to go if somebody pops up over the crest of the hill.” Once you get used to the terrifying maneuvers and traffic, riding around is quite pleasant because there isn’t the constant fear of retribution when you piss off other drivers. They just don’t get upset.
I may have painted the driving here as wacky. Totally intentional. So where are all the traffic accidents? I’ve spent about two hours a day in the van since we got here. I’ve seen the aftermath of maybe two or three accidents, and witnessed none. When I got my first taste of the driving here I thought people would be careening into one another left and right, but apparently not so. Unpredictable, crowded, aggressive, and…safe? Amazing. Granted, one of the accidents I did see was a three axle truck whose trailer brakes had failed during a turn, tossing a steel cargo trailer into a busy street and, if the ambulance was any indicator, squashing at least one person. Still, an impressive number of drivers on the road behaving in an irrational fashion in tight quarters and making it work.
