Drive Me Crazy

Man, drivers in Kanazawa SUCK. The most aggrivating manifestation of this suckiness is the tendancy to, on a busy, four lane road, just throw the hazards on and park it while some jackass runs into a store or waits for their friend to come out and meet them. In about 20 seconds there is a line of cars stuck trying to get into the other lane.

Another common trait here is for people to blow through intersections just after the light turns red. Where I come from, you do that with YELLOW lights, and if there is any chance the light will turn red before you at least get into the intersection, then you stop. Here, it's as though there's a 10 second grace period after the light turns red that you can continue on. Fortunately most Kanazawa folk seem to understand this unwritten rule, but it still fills me with spite.

So it's always an adventure, not to mention a good workout of my foul language repertior, to take a drive around here. I hesitate to apply the label of crappy driver to Japanese people as a whole because I haven't actively driven anywhere other than here in Kanazawa, and the outright lack of driving skill hasn't been so blatantly apparent to me in the other places I've visited in Japan.

In actuality, Japan takes a lot of steps to try and make it's drivers as skilled as possible, which is why I'm hoping that Kanazawa is just an anomoly. You have to be 18 years old to get your license here, and not after a lengthy bout of driving school. Speed limits are generally lower here than in the states, but people disobey them just the same. There is zero tolerance of driving under the influence here. In the states I wouldn't think twice about having a beer with dinner at a restaurant, but here it's out of the question.

Another way Japan attempts to promote driving safety is to give young and old drivers the option of identifying themselves.
The green and yellow sign means that this car is driven by someone who has just recently gotten their license.



Old folks get orange and yellow.



The prefered mode of transportation for the local old ladies is the adult trike. I see grannies peddling these bad boys around all over the place, or parked on the edge of the local garden plot. They are pretty cool actually and take all the risk out of drunken bicycling, plus having a wide back end affords extra basket space, which is more important than you might think.



Biking is definitely the better mode of transport for getting around locally, though. It's free, most time of the time it's faster, and you can avoid traffic and the frustration of the afformentioned crappy Kanazawa drivers.