GEORGIAN DRIVERS
After what seems an age I’m
posting again about my travels. What was meant to be a quiet retirement has
turned, for the moment at least, to full-on work in familiar places. By the end
of April I will have been to Brussels five times, Georgia and Abkhazia once and
Cyprus once. Maybe Istanbul as well, but I’ll believe it when I experience it.
Here I am, on a flight home after
a week in Georgia and one of its breakaway regions, Abkhazia. I’ve been
travelling with Rieks, the intrepid Dutchman of posts many years back, doing an
interesting River Basin study on the boundary between the two states. (or is it
one? Discuss)
I first came to Georgia in 2002
and many things have changed since then. Although very attractive it was a bit
wild and wooly, pretty poor, full of passion and kindness and you had to watch
your step. Now it is recognisable to those who have travelled recently in the
eastern part of the EU, with a beautifully vibrant capital city and glorious
countryside but increasingly ordered.
Undoubtedly the thing that has
changed most is the driving. When I first visited, I felt Georgian roads were
probably the most dangerous on earth; every driver a madman (I use the word
advisedly; no women drivers then), queues five wide at traffic lights on three
lane roads, and running red lights was so routine that it was safer to approach
a green light with great caution.
And now? Perfectly normal
European behaviour on the roads. I saw mad driving of the old sort four or five
times in my week there. I saw far many more instances of drivers pootling down
the road at 40kph, cap on head (the flat –‘at is not dead here) without a
care in the world.
So what has changed this
behaviour, and so quickly? I would cite two changes:
1. Women
drivers. In the early 2000s there were virtually no women drivers. My thesis is
that men knew exactly what other men were going to do and drove accordingly. We
all know that women are inclined to drive more cautiously than men – insurance
statistics show this – and perhaps the advent of women on the road meant that
men had to think carefully about what a woman might do in a hazardous situation
and decide not to put themselves into it. That’s just my theory.
2. What
is far more evident and without question is police enforcement. In the old days when somebody was
stopped for a driving offence, there was a brief discussion with the police
officer, a small amount of money passed hands ( 5€ was the going rate in my earlier time there) and nothing more was said. So
there was a feeling of impunity on the part of drivers. Not any more! The one
thing you notice on Georgian roads is traffic police, loads of them. If you
speed or cross a white line in the centre of the road you’re likely to get
caught – and nowadays the police cars are as fast as the miscreants’! There’s
no chance of bribing the police officer any more; it’s virtually a hanging
offence for them nowadays. So there’s a high degree of compliance.
But I have to say, it does make
journeys a little more boring, not being able to watch these young bloods
dicing with death.
