Having resided in Turkey s capital for several years during the '90s, Pierre Flener, an associate professor at the Uppsala University in Sweden, knows something about Turkey s traffic. In these excerpts from his 'Diary of a Foreigner Living In Turkey,' penned in 1996, he makes scientific and satiric observations ISTANBUL - Turkish Daily News Even though the rules of driving in Turkey are theoretically the same as in the "West," almost nobody sticks to them, and it comes down to mere survival of the "fittest" on the roads: The biggest/fastest/most-ruthless has the priority, wherever he's coming from, at whatever speed he's coming! (Note that I can happily write "he" when referring to a driver, because there are only a few female drivers here, and they tend to be rather considerate.
) Pedestrians thus have the lowest priority, and they are expected to know that and to be very swift to avoid being run over. Of course, if you are used to "Western" courtesy by drivers (although even this is slowly disappearing in the "West,") then it will really look as if they were actually trying to run you down! But such is not the case: The drivers are so used to pedestrians getting out of the way in the last second that they expect it!
( ) We foreigners here in Ankara have discovered what we call the "Critical Mass Theory (CMT)" (I have observed this in other countries as well): Pedestrians can cross anywhere and anytime, even if they have red lights, provided they number at least 15 to 20 (according to the width of the road and the speed of the traffic)! This always happens spontaneously, without explicit consent, once the crowd "feels" that the critical mass has been reached. Just imagine the chaos, and the angrily honking drivers who know that such a crowd cannot possibly get out of the way fast enough, i.
e. that they must brake (gasp!).
Another observation is the "Local Space Optimization Principle (LSOP)": Especially when driving, from point A to point B say, Turks seem to be genetically hardwired to try to move spatially closer to goal B, by going to an intermediate point, X say, and then starting all over again. (Point X is often, but not always, on the straight line between A and B.) But this goes without anticipating whether the overall time it takes from A to B via X is optimal, nor whether their move impedes global traffic.
For instance, if at an intersection someone wants to turn left, but the left-bound lane has many more vehicles than the right-bound one, he will queue up in the latter (because that gets him, temporarily! and spatially closer to the goal), but he will then waste precious time (and run huge risks) in wheedling through the traffic on the intersection, not to mention that this slows down everybody else. Another example is for two-lane roads: Suppose a line of cars on the fast lane (usually the left one) approaches a creeping truck on the slow lane; if somebody at the rear of the line sees the huge empty space on the slow lane, he will pass, by the LSOP, the entire line on its right, only to get stuck behind the truck until the entire line (including the new arrivals to it!
) have passed it. A last example is queuing (ahem, crowding) around a service point: Again, one is physically closer, but oversight is lost and down the drain goes any chance for first-come first-served discipline; so they scream and push, and the fittest will wait less (by lack of respect). By the way, Turks don't seem to mind being pushed, having others' elbows or bags shoved onto their bodies, or, in general, "suffering" from all other forms of useless body contacts, just because somebody is applying the LSOP.
This of course fits the "interpersonal distance" theory, which measures the distance people of various nations want to keep from other people in order to be comfortable. ( ) Not surprisingly, motor sports are relatively unpopular here: Formula 1, Indy, rally, etc. races are barely covered by the media, contrary to the huge audiences these competitions draw in "Western" countries.
And why should they, as driving yourself to the nearest supermarket gives you higher thrills than watching a bunch of dudes doing a stock-car race!
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