Driving in Uruguay
- By Chuck
- October 15, 2016
- No Comments
I have decided to go ahead and post this. I wrote it in March of 2015 and wanted photos to go with it, but I was never able to get any as I was driving and that was just not safe. Here it is anyway, without many photos.
7016- Since I have been down here, I have been driving a lot, both in the country and in the cities, and it is not much like driving in the States. First of all, only about 50 percent of the streets are paved and that is the same whether you are in the country or in town, so you are always on the lookout for pot holes and ditches. In addition to that, there are lomatas (speed bumps) on the paved streets that sometimes have warning signs but, more often than not, they do not. The lomatas are unpainted and tall so that if you hit one, your fillings are going to know it. When driving on highways, there is typically a travel lane in each direction and what we would call a break down lane on each side of the road. But in Uruguay, those lanes are used by pedestrians, motos (motorscooters) and by cars that are letting someone pass. So if you see a car coming up from behind, you are supposed to move to the right in to the breakdown lane, avoiding the people, motos or dogs, so the car can pass and not hit the car coming in the other direction. If you are going in the other direction and see someone passing a car coming toward you, you are also supposed to get to the right so they can pass and you are not involved in a head on collision. I have seen four cars passing each other on the road with two cars going in each direction. I have also seen four cars passing with one car going in one direction and three cars going in the other direction.
There are traffic laws here and occasionally no passing lines on the roads, but it seems that those are more suggestions than laws because no one pays any attention to them. One law says you must have your lights on, but I swear sometimes that is just the dome light, even at night and I am sure no one has ever been trained in the use of turn signals. There is an extensive use of traffic circles as, outside of Montevideo, there are hardly any stop lights. In Atlantida, the closest city to where I am staying, it is a city of over 10,000 people, there are no stop lights at all.
Montevideo is the capital city and I have spent a lot of time driving down there as well. The entire country of Uruguay had a population of 3.2 million people in the last census and more than half of the population of the entire country lives in Montevideo. Montevideo was founded in 1724 and the streets were designed for horses and horse carts. The buildings are built right up to the corners (with a sidewalk) and most buildings are at least three stories tall, so it is like driving in a tunnel. Many of the streets are one way and many times there is barely enough room for a single car to get through as there are usually cars parked on each side of the street. Add to that the fact that there are no stop or yield signs on any of the streets, so it is always a free for all when you get to a corner. There may be some sort of a right of way hierarchy but I am still at a loss as to what it might be.
The main streets are not much better as there are usually no painted lines on the road or at intersections, so as many cars as can fit is the rule. Cars will pass you on all sides and at one of the few street lights, it looks like the start of a moto cross race when the light turns green. You may have three or four cars and motos lined up on one side of the intersection and when the light changes (many times before the light actually changes) they all race across the street jockeying for position for one of the two lanes on the other side. If there is a painted line, it will be a bus lane with signs and red painted warnings everywhere indicating that the lane is for buses only. That apparently doesn’t mean anything either as cars, motos and horse drawn carts (which all over downtown) will all use it as well as people who will stop and park in the bus lane to go in to a store to do some shopping. That is actually OK though because the buses don’t use that lane anyway, as they use any of the regular lanes and veer to the right when they need to pick someone up. The main streets may be two lanes wide, then go to three lanes wide and then back to two lanes again, sometimes in the space of a mile or two. In addition, people just stop or park in the right lane, so I have a tendency to stay in the left lane until I am ready to turn right. Add to that, every stop light has a variety of street performers that will get out in traffic as the light is red and juggle flaming sticks, balls or sometimes knives or there will be window washers or people trying to sell something so you have a real carnival atmosphere at every corner.
Finally, lets talk about the motos. Almost all of the motos are under 125cc and many can’t get out of their own way. They are cheap and gas goes a long way, so there are tons of them. The problem with them is that they are everywhere and people drive them with very little regard for the other traffic. They split lanes and zip in and out of traffic, even on the highways, as if they are invincible. They are not because of the very few accidents that I have seen, they almost always have involved a moto. There is a helmet law, but apparently you don’t have to wear it as, even though I have seen lots of people wearing them, most without a chin strap, I have also seen many people carrying them on their arm protecting their elbows. And there is apparently no law as to how many people you can have on the scooters as I have seen whole families many times and, at one time, I saw five people and a dog tooling down the road. Probably the most unusual thing (to me) I have heard of, was a big woman with a toddler on the back of the scooter. The toddler could barely get his arms around his mom’s waist, and Mom had her right hand on the handlebars and was nursing a baby in her her left arm as she cruised down the highway. The people are ingenious with what they can carry as well. You always see people with bags and bags of groceries but I have seen people carrying doors, steel rebar and even panes of glass.
With all of this being said, I don’t want to sound negative about driving down here. Everyone seems to know what to expect and they make it work so I really enjoy driving here. As I said, I have seen very few accidents while I have been here and you do see all kinds of older model US cars, brands of cars you recognize but models that we don’t have in the states as well all kinds European and Chinese cars that you have never seen. One of my Uruguay friends told me that I am the first Notre Americano she has met who drives like a Uruguayan…I still haven’t figured out if that is a complement or not.
