August 19, 2010
New Orleans Drivers
1. When New Orleanians drive — quite intentionally — the wrong way down a one-way street, they go as fast as they can to minimize the time they are committing a traffic violation, thereby quadrupling the danger for the unwary. In parking lot lanes they love to drive as fast as possible, as on a freeway. They like to pop out into a street and then look about to see if anyone is there. I remember once walking on State Street toward Magazine when a motorcyclist popped out of nowhere toward me, driving on the sidewalk. He smiled embarrassedly and went on his way.
2. If a New Orleanian lives in the middle of the block on a one-way street, he’ll drive the street as if it were two-way, going in and out the wrong direction to enter his driveway, always faster than would be safe (get there fast is the rule) so no one will notice.
3. A New Orleanian will never signal a left or right turn. Only outsiders signal. If a New Orleanian has her blinker on, it has no meaning. When making a left turn on a multi-lane road, the New Orleanian in the far left lane may choose to swoop across to the far right line, directly in the path of other drivers turning left. Watch it! When turning left into a side street from a single lane of traffic, the New Orleanian makes a wide sweep to the right and then turns left, believing that a straight-on angle is always the best approach, as though his sedan were an eighteen-wheeler. If you seeing him veering right, watch for the left turn.
4. New Orleanians never slow down on yellow, nor do they stop at a red light they themselves have witnessed turn red (unless, of course, someone is stopped in front of them; New Orleanians try to avoid collisions, if time permits them to think about it). Most New Orleanians actually speed up at a yellow light — move on fast, they reason, before the light decides to turn red.
5. Two-way streets in New Orleans are often narrow, and may be one block off a one-way street running parallel. When New Orleanians drive down a narrow two-way street,with no one coming from the other direction, they hog the road. If another driver advances, or tries to turn into the street, he is lost and forced off the road. The New Orleanian takes the whole road. After all, it’s narrow, and there wasn’t anyone there before, was there? (See 14 below.)
6. New Orleanians are curious by nature. They like to look into the interiors of cars they are following. They want to see up close exactly what you have in your car. They tailgate right behind you, even to the point of forcing you off the road, so they can see what’s in your car. Tailgating, on the other hand, may signal that the driver is impatient and he can’t pass you on the left or on the right, but watch him weave around behind you trying. The only way to get rid of him is to pull off the road— and that doesn’t always work, as he might pull off and try to engage you in conversation. (See 9 below.) Sometimes a curious tailgater will pull alongside you to stop you and talk, right in the street. If you anxiously watch a tailgater in your rear-view mirror you may stir the road rage impulse in him. Better turn off the road.
7. At an intersection when the light turns green, New Orleanians will boldly take a fast and sudden right turn at the expense of frightened pedestrians trying to cross the street at the marked crosswalk. There is no pedestrian walk light outside the CBD (vs. Seattle, Boston, New York, Washington, and cities throughout the world). Standard procedure in our town is to threaten pedestrians, who de facto do not have the right of way. At a stop sign, a New Orleanian will occasionally, in a fit of guilt, stop to permit a pedestrian to cross. Most ot the time the walker has to wait for a long line of cars to pass, all following the leader past the stop sign. As a pedestrian you are expected to wave and bow in gratitude.
8. There’s one case where the driver becomes the offending pedestrian. The New Orleanian driver, when not in his car but walking with a group of four, five or more people, forms a phalanx and marches down the middle of the street as in a parade. All traffic stops. All cars wait patiently. This is New Orleans. New Orleanians don’t walk on the sidewalk, they walk on the street.
9. New Orleanians like to drive as fast as conditions permit — not as they warrant, I say, but as they permit. In quiet residential neighborhoods New Orleanians will speed; it is fun, they believe, to drive fast. If a local road goes on a while without an intersection, beware! The New Orleanian will accelerate up to fifty, sixty, sixty-five. Leake Ave/River Road early in the morning looks like I-10. Try crossing Magazine Street at Audubon Park on foot when the traffic is light. When traffic is heavy, there’s no problem. Try it when a single New Orleanian is barreling down the street. If you are doing twenty-five on Magazine street with no traffic in front of you, a New Orleanian will hug your tail in irritation, just as she does when standing in line at Rite Aid. There’s nobody there — let’s do fifty.
10. New Orleanians, who in the good old days used to drive without insurance or up-to-date vehicle registration, have learned from bitter experience that speeding can’t be proven without witnesses, while failure to yield can be demonstrated. They themselves blithely fail to yield, but are quick to honk at any other offenders — even if it’s someone turning left at a remote stop sign a hundred meters ahead with no other traffic in sight. Honk! Honk! (What? Where?)
11. In major cities of the world, the horn is a signal: Alert! In the old communist states honking your horn was a serious traffic violation; it was forbidden. New Orleanians honk when waiting in lines of cars at a standstill, for whatever cause that is blocked from view. The honk means: I’m irritable, I want to go home. Long honk (lean on the horn): I’m really fed up, y’all. And no one can do anything about it.
12. Parking lots are dangerous, and New Orleanians love to speed in parking lots. Give them an open lane and they will go just as fast as they can accelerate. Never mind who might emerge from behind a car, or what driver or pedestrian or child might fail to see their careening vehicle.
13. When it rains, New Orleanians love to splash down the street in their cars, like little children at play. Pedestrians beware: New Orleanians don’t care if you are splashed along with the car. The harder it rains, the faster they drive. One has to press against the sides of houses to escape the waves they make.
14. Driving in any city is perilous, and New Orleans is no exception. One has to be from here to know where the dangerous intersections lie. New Orleanians like to get as quickly as possible from Broadway to Carrollton, and several cross streets are conveniently without stop signs the whole nine blocks — Oak, for example, is one-way from Broadway to Carrollton without a stop sign. But not so Hampson; there are stop signs at Hampson and Short, one block from Carrollton, but New Orleanians disregard those stop signs and charge right ahead. Drivers on Short Street (a two-way through street paralleling Carrollton) are expected to stop for the Hampson drivers who routinely run the stop sign. After all, it’s only one block from busy Carrollton Avenue — why should we have to stop again one block away? Go for the fender bender instead.
15. Other cities and other countries may have it worse. In Boston or Prague, one has to be from there to have any hope of survival behind the wheel. Nothing in New Orleans compares to the agony of Central European autobahns, where innocents die every day, slaughtered by impatient men and women in fast cars. The point in the Czech Republic, for example, is not to get from point A to point B. Rather, it is to punish the drivers of trucks and other fast cars simply because they exist. We are not like that in New Orleans.
16. However, do not let a New Orleanian loose on a European highway. Women, children, and old men ride bicycles on twisting lanes in the Dolomite mountains of Salzkammergut, and they survive to tell of it. (See 7 above.) Drivers are alert and courteous, above all better trained and, so it seems, somehow more intelligent. Can this be so? Teenagers have to take a difficult course in driving with a large compulsory fee before they get their licenses. Such places do not know our New Orleanian humanity and flexibility. I taught my son how to drive in a remote parking lot in a tiny town in Bohemia, and the locals warned me: this is illegal. Like me, New Orleanians teach their children to drive, God help them.
17. Years ago one would see slow-moving station wagons filled with nuns, driven by a mother superior venturing into the world with an air of unworldly uncertainty. You’d have to watch for these station wagons, say your prayers, count your mardi gras beads. I don’t see them much these days. (By S.Wilson)
18. There are a lot of old cars in New Orleans — my 1979 Toyota hatchback was for a time among their number — which seem patched together with glue and old engine oil. What keeps them going? (By S. Wilson)
19. All in all, for all their faults, New Orleanians are creative drivers. Any road, if wide enough, can become a two-lane road for a New Orleanian (cf. however 5 above). Suddenly one will see a car cruising immediately to one’s right in the parking lane on St. Charles, skimming past parked cars; in a moment, of course, she’s passing you, like people in line at Rite Aid. When New Orleanians want to turn right, they don’t wait in a long single lane of cars at a stoplight. If the opportunity presents itself, the New Orleanian will make a special right-turn lane with himself at the head. These lanes form spontaneously, so watch it when waiting at a light to turn right — someone is already turning in front of you.
20. New Orleans is bad, but it is quaint and old. I am a New Orleanian, quaint and old myself, and I am a New Orleanian driver to the core. Go for it! Geaux for it, as we cheerfully spell it. Never apologize.
gmc
