So the city of Alexandria decided to play a practical joke on the citizens of the city. I'm not actually certain if it was a joke or if it was just some weak attempt at actually implementing city planning. Anyways, it goes something like this: the Public Administration of Transportation decided to mark lanes on the roads of Alexandria.
Good idea, you might be thinking, and you're probably right. I'm thinking the same thing, but I'm also seeing the poor implementation of this good idea.
The lanes have been marked at the street intersections where the first three rows of cars, both wide and deep, would be waiting their turn to turn their wheels again. Something needs to be understood here though: the rule of driving a car on the streets of Egypt is that there are no rules. I mean, the only rules are the understood customs and habits amongst the drivers themselves. Any state laws are not really implemented. Directly applied to three white stripes, painted 30 feet deep, at an intersection means absolutely nothing to car drivers. The roads are chaos the whole stretch of road before the intersection and there is no hope of them suddenly straightening themselves out at the presence of fresh white paint.
And just like other road laws which are not implemented, neither is this one. The policemen directing traffic on the streets don't implement this new lane thing and neither are they able to. The road, now designated into three lanes, continues to witness cars squeezed abreast, effectively making the road five lanes and the cars continue to inch forward beyond the designated stop line whole car lengths.
The government also decided on another practical funny: road lights. They seem to work most of the time. Occasionally though, they might be down for two to three days. They are still new so perhaps they are working out electrical kinks. The people seem to obey the traffic lights more than they do the white paint beneath their wheels.
However, traffic lights mean there isn't need for policemen at intersections directing the flow of traffic, and that traffic light can't record your license plate like that policeman can (which they do in a very primitive manner by recording the license plate in script, in a notebook with them. Electronic surveillance doesn't exist here.) So, whose going to really listen to that changing light?
However the lights are not just circular indicators hanging above the intersection, they are either green or red lighted numbers counting down the number of seconds remaining for either your acceleration or your deceleration. This is, in effect, interpreted as the following: green means go, with the added meaning of you should start nosing your way out early; green changing into red (i.e. the last two remaining seconds) means there is still time and you should slam the accelerator and avoid colliding with the protruding noses of the other cars.
When the lights aren't working things resort to their prior state of being: disfunctionality and chaos. There are no such rules like we have at four way stops in Texas where you know whose turn is next in the event of failing traffic lights (either by first arrival or following the clockwise pattern when more than two cars are present). This is compounded by the fact that policeman are not immediately present on the scene to stand in for the fickleness of the traffic lights.
In short, implementing serious change in Egyptian society like this is going to take a much larger effort than what the government recently undertook in this regard. So far, Egypt's streets continue as they have been and as the Egyptian's describe them, "Everything here runs on blessing." Mainly because there is hardly any organization and the only possible explanation for a lack of greater catastrophes and calamities is blessing from above. I side with them in this belief.
Good idea, you might be thinking, and you're probably right. I'm thinking the same thing, but I'm also seeing the poor implementation of this good idea.
The lanes have been marked at the street intersections where the first three rows of cars, both wide and deep, would be waiting their turn to turn their wheels again. Something needs to be understood here though: the rule of driving a car on the streets of Egypt is that there are no rules. I mean, the only rules are the understood customs and habits amongst the drivers themselves. Any state laws are not really implemented. Directly applied to three white stripes, painted 30 feet deep, at an intersection means absolutely nothing to car drivers. The roads are chaos the whole stretch of road before the intersection and there is no hope of them suddenly straightening themselves out at the presence of fresh white paint.
And just like other road laws which are not implemented, neither is this one. The policemen directing traffic on the streets don't implement this new lane thing and neither are they able to. The road, now designated into three lanes, continues to witness cars squeezed abreast, effectively making the road five lanes and the cars continue to inch forward beyond the designated stop line whole car lengths.
The government also decided on another practical funny: road lights. They seem to work most of the time. Occasionally though, they might be down for two to three days. They are still new so perhaps they are working out electrical kinks. The people seem to obey the traffic lights more than they do the white paint beneath their wheels.
However, traffic lights mean there isn't need for policemen at intersections directing the flow of traffic, and that traffic light can't record your license plate like that policeman can (which they do in a very primitive manner by recording the license plate in script, in a notebook with them. Electronic surveillance doesn't exist here.) So, whose going to really listen to that changing light?
However the lights are not just circular indicators hanging above the intersection, they are either green or red lighted numbers counting down the number of seconds remaining for either your acceleration or your deceleration. This is, in effect, interpreted as the following: green means go, with the added meaning of you should start nosing your way out early; green changing into red (i.e. the last two remaining seconds) means there is still time and you should slam the accelerator and avoid colliding with the protruding noses of the other cars.
When the lights aren't working things resort to their prior state of being: disfunctionality and chaos. There are no such rules like we have at four way stops in Texas where you know whose turn is next in the event of failing traffic lights (either by first arrival or following the clockwise pattern when more than two cars are present). This is compounded by the fact that policeman are not immediately present on the scene to stand in for the fickleness of the traffic lights.
In short, implementing serious change in Egyptian society like this is going to take a much larger effort than what the government recently undertook in this regard. So far, Egypt's streets continue as they have been and as the Egyptian's describe them, "Everything here runs on blessing." Mainly because there is hardly any organization and the only possible explanation for a lack of greater catastrophes and calamities is blessing from above. I side with them in this belief.
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