Safe Speed Forums

Many of you astute folk will realise that I've been absent for a couple of weeks. what, none? Oh well!

The reason.. June and I have been to Egypt on holiday. It was intense too. The primary purpose was to take in the total eclipse on March 29th - which we did. The remiander of the holiday was sight seeing (pyramids, temples etc) followed by a cruise down the Nile. Anyhow - enough of that (although if there is interest I can write chapter and verse). This is about driving in Egypt.

Please accept that I'm not known for exaggeration and everything you see below in this post is factual and not exaggerated at all. ALL the customs and practices are perverse in the extreme. Eg:

1) We go through substantially fewer green lights without stopping than red lights. I think this is because the folk coming the other way are more likely to filter in if it is not (what we would call) "their road".

2) There is a horn code. I never worked it out fully, but it definitely exists. The meanings, depending on number of blasts (1 to 4), length of final blast (short long and very long), length of first blast (short or medium), position, speed and direction of road vehicle with respect to target vehicle(s), it can mean either "I'm coming through GTF out", "I'm coming through, you're not in the way but it's going to be tight so don't drift", "You can come through I'll make way for you if it gets too tight", "you should not have done that but I let you get away with it", "no ****ing way, don't try it I'll have to hit something if you do and it might just be you". The horn code is unrelenting 24/7, and particularly prevalent in areas where there are "no hooting" signs.

3) Similar with light flashes at night, but these supplement rather than replace hooting.

4) Anything on the minor road pulls out, slowly but surely into traffic, never gets hit, but often causes a solilloqy of hooting, breathing in, bunching and a bit of braking.

5) Most major roads are dual carriageway, marked out 3 or 4 lanes. A single carriageway road is a rareity.

6) All roads carry at least one and typically two more lines of traffic than the lane markings would seem to indicate. A three lane road will in jams carry at least four lines of traffic all jostling for position.

7) Plenty of gaps exist in dual carriageways. U turns are a way of life. Coaches do this regularly, often involving 3-point manouevres across the central reservation.

8) Coaches reversing 100 yards or more in the "fast" lane of dual carriageways having just U-turned or come from a side road to park outside shops is normal, as is car and van parking for the odd 10 minutes in any lane (slow or fast).

9) At night, at the time when you or I would be thinking of putting on main beam having reached the open road... the lights go off to preserve bulb life.

10) Vehicel maintenance would appear nonexistent.

11) Apart from approximately 3 cars I saw, all vehicles are at least 40 years old.

12) Hooting applies particularly when in extremely close proximity to a horse or donkey pulling either a chariot or a workload. Donkeys are the only vehicle with ABS!

13) Take 20 consecutive cars and you will have at least three with all headlights failed, replaced with assorted LEDs, neons, coloured bulbs strung all over the place. All colours of the rainbow.

14) The most popular people carrier is a VW Caravette with the innards stripped out and lots of bench seating. The engine rear door is invariably propped open (or missing) to supplement the inadeqwuate air cooling.

15) 99 vehicles out of 100 have visible battlescars.

Despite all this I never witnessed an accident - although by my definition I witnessed approximately 4 near misses per minute in traffic.

Thoughts?

any jobs going

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now retired

ROTFLMAO

I doubt it for a camop. Plenty of coach drivers and horse/trap driver jobs though - but pay is not too good. They rely on "buckshees".

The police presence is very high but they don't seem to care one jolt. Their vehicles are less battlescarred, but just as guilty for the psycadellic lighting displays - all different and not related to "blues and twos" at all.

welcome back

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now retired

ta. Just deleted > 400 spam e-mails!

All from camera operator?

I know a couple who have recently come back from Egypt and they had said pretty much the same thing. I also heard the story of them crossing the road. 3 lanes. Each side.

And I had started to notice that you weren't around...

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Andrew.

I went there in November and figured I was safer under water than in any road vehicle .

They take running pedestrians over very seriously. Were we would slow down they speed up. But the pedestrians seem to relish the challenge. We went to town one night and there was a guy crossing the road. Obviously he wasn't looking, he was texting a mate on his phone. Our Taxi increased it's speed, horn blaring as the guy calmly walked across the road into the path of our taxi. Just at the point of impact he looked up and took a long stride and turned, smiled and slapped our windscreen with his hand, while still texting. Our driver drove on smiling while we screemed. The guy walking still texting carried on his way only to has the same thing happen with a car going the other way.

Welcome back Roger. The Pyramids are impressive aren't they. What amazed me is until I went there I thought they were in the middle of the desert I didn't realise they were actually in the suburbs of Cairo. Was the Sphinx smaller than you thought?

I take it you were a passenger and didn't actually do any driving.

Did you get into the Cairo museum? That's also impressive.

I think that style of driving is fairly prevelant all over North Africa but there are surprisingly few bad accidents. Lots of minor scrapes but they seem to lead a charmed life at times.

Traffic doesn't get any more dense that Cairo in the rush hour so the point you might be making is that do all our obedient law abiding drivers actually kill more people or less?

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Shooting is good for you and too good for some people.

Welcome back Roger.

I want to hear about the eclipse. We travelled to Cornwall in 1999 to see the total eclipse from there, but it was cloudy. Still it was an amazing experience with tens of thousands of visitors there with a single purpose.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

It was absolutely fantastic. We were fortunate to meet up with a knowledgeable crowd, many of whom were eclipse veterans (we were eclipse virgins). We had almost 4 minutes of totality where we were, which gave us time to gaze around a bit at more than just the eclipsed sun. I am in the throes of making a DVD from the video I shot. I'll make sure I send you a copy once I've finished (don't hold your breath tho!).

I took out a telescope with driven mount on which I boresighted a decent camcorder. I timelapse recorded (about 20 sec every 5 minutes) in the run-up to totality and on the out phase, with continuous recording from a couple of minutes prior to second contact right through totality.

Correct - no driving for me. I hope I've not picked up any of their habits either!

The Cairo museum was one of many places we visited while I was "out of it" with asthma. It certainly was an impressive building though.

The Cairo rush-hour lasts 24 hours each day. I've witnessed it - never ends.

Yes - I can confirm these antics - the pedestrians are treated as agile skittles - even when they are six years old. It is a different world - and one I want no part of.