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 Travel & Outdoors | November 2007 
Driving in Mexico City: Headache Grande
 Chris Hawley - The Arizona Republic
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| | "Driving here is no game," says Mexico City driving instructor Victor Farias, who checks his mirror during a lesson with Eva Diaz. (Chris Hawley/The Arizona Republic) |
Mexico City - Thirty minutes into her first driving lesson in Mexico City, Tamara Orendain had navigated a flooded street, a flower vendor, a film shoot, a broken traffic light, three jaywalkers, 10 speed bumps and a London-style traffic circle.
"Watch those stop signs," cautioned driving instructor Victor Farias as Orendain, 17, barreled through another intersection in the world's second-biggest city. "Keep looking forward, always predicting the next pothole or speed bump or person cutting you off."
When it comes to driving, the Mexican capital is a city-size obstacle course, a diabolical combination of 16th-century streets, loose laws and lax maintenance. It's like driving in New York City without rules and in Los Angeles' congestion.
And as Mexicans get more affluent, cars are multiplying. Traffic accidents have hit an all-time high. Now, the city is trying to impose some order with a new traffic code. As a day with Farias shows, it's an uphill battle.
"A little brake," Farias said as Orendain whirled around the traffic circle again, right behind a Nissan slicing across three lanes of traffic. The next street had no lines. As cars weaved all around, Farias explained the Mexico City art of inventing your own lane.
"Look ahead to the intersection, and line up with one of the cars stopped there," he said. "If you're on the right, line up with the cars along the street. That's your lane."
An SUV pulled out. Orendain swerved toward a parked car; Farias grabbed the wheel.
Cars everywhere
Mexico City long has had an overpopulation of cars, as evidenced by the city's legendary smog problem. In 1985 the city government barred most cars from driving on one day each week to cut down on air pollution, a rule that continues to this day.
Still, car sales in Mexico have tripled in the past decade, reaching 680,942 last year, according to Mexico's census bureau. The rise has accompanied a jump in the average Mexican income, which rose 54 percent, from $5,110 in 2000, to $7,870 in 2006, according to the World Bank. U.S. average incomes rose 31 percent in the same period.
By 2005, vehicles in the Mexico City metro area hit 3.8 million, and the number was rising at more than 100,000 per year, according to city and state government figures. The city has a population of 19.4 million, second only to Tokyo, according to the United Nations.
Compared with some cities, that's not a lot of cars. Los Angeles County, for example, has more than 7 million registered vehicles, according to the California Department of Transportation. Keep in mind, the tightly packed streets of the Mexican capital and its shortage of freeways amplify traffic problems.
Along with the glut of cars, the city also has more peculiar traffic problems. In late November and early December, hundreds of thousands of pilgrims, many of them crawling on their hands and knees, descend on northern Mexico City to celebrate the Dec. 12 feast day of the Virgin of Guadalupe.
Political demonstrations and marches pop up without warning. Last year, demonstrators angry about the results of the presidential election shut down 8 miles of the city's main Reforma Avenue for six weeks.
Even geology conspires against motorists. Parts of Mexico City are sinking into the ground as quickly as 3 inches a year, snapping water mains, cracking pavement and causing sinkholes.
Mean streets
The clogged streets have bred a cutthroat driving style that makes visitors blanch. Turn signals are routinely ignored. Turning from the far lane is accepted. Switching lanes abruptly in front of someone is not rude; it's considered practical.
Stop signs are widely disregarded. Many intersections don't even have them, relying instead on enormous speed bumps to slow down traffic from one direction.
"There's a lack of respect for the law, a lack of good traffic culture," said Alejandro Ruiz, director of education at the Mexican Automobile Association.
Chilangos, as Mexico City residents are known, acknowledge their general lawlessness with a shrug. "Beware: I drive just like you," read bumper stickers being sold by a vendor on Miguel Angel de Quevedo Street recently. "YOU DRIVE HORRIBLY - GET INSURED," one insurance company's billboards say.
City officials, however, are not amused. The number of accidents in central Mexico City shot from 10,990 in 2000, to 16,390 last year, an increase of 49 percent. In fact, a vehicle that instructor Farias was in was rear-ended by a hit-and-run driver while giving a lesson two weeks earlier.
Mayor Marcelo Ebrard has warned that congestion on the city's streets is quickly reaching a crisis point.
"We have this urban ideology that is intimately linked to the idea that the automobile is progress. Everyone wants a car," he told reporters last month. "We have to think of this city as being for people and not for cars."
New rules
The traffic light was out on Homero Street, turning the intersection into a sea of cars. A man walked through the mess, handing out advertising fliers.
"Tomorrow, I'm going to bring you a copy of the new transit law to look over so the cops don't try to pull your leg," Farias told Orendain. "Because, remember, turn on your turn signal."
Orendain hit the windshield wipers and stalled the car. The cars behind began honking. Farias turned on the blinkers and kept talking. "Because, remember, now, you accumulate points. And if you get 12 points, they'll take away your license for three years."
The point system is at the heart of a new transit law unveiled in July to try to bring order to the streets.
The rules, like those requiring all new cars after 2008 to carry anti-theft tracking devices, have caused grumbling.
"The police are always harassing us," said Manuel Ortega, a taxi driver. "This is just going to make it worse."
Other parts of the law specify punishments for trespassing in pedestrian zones and bike lanes; bar drivers from carrying children younger than 12 in the front seats; and prohibit the use of cellphones and televisions in the front seats.
No game
After Orendain evaded two more jaywalkers, a crowd of schoolchildren, a vendor of brooms and mops, a double-parked truck, another pamphleteer and a large concrete barrier that was blocking Presa Danxho Street for no apparent reason, the lesson was over.
Farias got behind the wheel for the trip back to the driving school.
"I think this new law will help," he said. "In the beginning, people were getting ticketed all day long. But people are already stopping earlier, not putting on their makeup while they're driving, not talking on their cellphones."
As he rounded another traffic circle, a motorcycle slammed into a beer truck behind him. Brown bottles crashed to the pavement.
Farias looked in his rearview mirror and shook his head.
"That kind of thing can happen at anytime here," he said. "I'm telling you, driving here is no game."
Reach the reporter at chris.hawley@arizonarepublic.com. |
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