Jerusalem driving

Well, I haven't written in ages because in fact living in Jerusalem has rendered me wordless when it comes to describing this experience. I feel completely overwhelmed by all of the sensations and observations.

There is the whole experience of driving and dealing with traffic here and all of the things I have learned through observations. All of these observations come from watching real Israeli drivers everyday on my way back and forth to school and work. I have learned all sorts of things about driving that I never knew before. For example, it is okay to go the wrong way on a one-way street, as long as you do it in reverse. Evidently, the car just needs to be pointed in the one-way direction. This is very problematic for pedestrians. They have to always look both ways when crossing one-way streets because one never knows when the speeding car going the wrong way in reverse will be coming by.

I have also learned that traffic laws only apply when you don't have any perceived special needs. For example, if a driver needs to just run into a store really quick to pick something up, that driver can just stop the car in the moving lane of traffic and go run into the store to get the needed item; creating a traffic jam that extends back for a mile.

I have also learned that traffic markings on the roads are really just suggestions. The arrows and lane markings frequently change within a few feet of the previous marking; therefore, if a driver chooses to ignore the markings altogether it is not really an issue. For example, a lane that had an arrow pointing straight ahead 10 feet back now has become the left-turn lane as indicated by a left-turn arrow in the road; therefore the driver in the lane next to it that is a straight-arrow lane is free to also make a left turn. This is really only a problem when the driver in the suddenly-changed left-turn lane wants to go straight, which of course that driver can do if he/she wants to, because all of these arrows are obviously just suggestions.

The interesting thing is that the Israelis are very proud of their driver education program. Israelis must clock a ridiculously long amount of time - around 100 hours - with a driving school before they can get their licenses. The student drivers are everywhere and they are annoyingly slow wherever they go AND they obey all of the traffic laws. However, once the drivers are licensed, they obviously forget everything they were taught. Perhaps there is some brain-destroying device in the photo machine that takes their pictures! That does not bode well for me! I'll be getting my new Israeli driver's license any day now. Of course, I didn't have to go through the instructional time because I have a current valid US license, but I did have to get my photo taken...