Driving in Cairo

It is a nerve wrecking experience…every time I hit the street.

I never had any pleasurable drive since I got my truck. The more relax drive would be during the morning and early afternoon of every Friday, when the devoted locals stayed home and visit nearby mosque for Friday prayer.

Here are some of the things that made driving in Cairo one of the most adventurous activities:

• Car horns coming from every direction. I still can’t get use to the swarming of noise; it’s rude to horn in Singapore unnecessary, whereby most of the time people will give you the offended stares if you do so, even if you have the right reasons. But not so in Cairo, every driver does it…excessively. I often got confused as to whether the horns are directly towards me.

• You will never know whether a lane is one way or for 2 ways traffic flow. I got stuck a few times on road that is small enough to only allow one car to pass thru; the basic rule of keep right driving does not apply here sometimes.

• You will master the art of tight tolerance navigation if you spend enough time on those narrow lanes. Very often I felt the on coming vehicle is going to rub shoulder with my truck. This happened in wider road as well, as there’s no proper car park here, the drivers will park their vehicle along the road shoulder, both side! This made a wide lane into a narrow passing.

• Pedestrian hazards. No proper walkway for them and most of them just walk besides the road, next to the parked car aligning along the road, sharing the already very narrow lane. The most awakening scare they can give a driver is to run across the highway… because there’s no pedestrian crossing or they are lazy to use it. Imagine you are driving around 90km/h and suddenly a mum holding a child with one hand and cuddling one more baby with another arm, suddenly running across in front of your car, 20 meters away.

• Parking. Designated parking lot is almost non existence, except in big shopping malls or complex. It’s not easy to find a place to park your car, I think the car population is way too saturated and parking space is getting scarce. It’s a stunt trying to parallel park your car with other cars flanking on both sides. You also have to worry whether you get your car out when you leave the place, sometimes cars that come later and park in front and behind your car, leave you no space to get out. Furthermore, they don’t practice reverse parking as religiously as Singaporean.

• Lane marking. Almost none! Even if there is, they will ignore it. Very often they will drive on the lane marking, or turning 2 lanes in to 4 lanes. Once I saw a very narrow lane marking near Nasr City, I really can’t figure out what make the people who draw it thinks that the car can actually stay within the lane. It is so narrow that I told my wife that it should be intended for donkeys only.

• No traffic lights! Sometime you can find traffic police at a cross road or junction, but I don’t think they help a lots, their instruction is very confusing.

• Roads at night are poorly lighted, and most of the local driver doesn’t like to turn on the head lights, it’s believed by them that the light can blind them.

• The surface of the moon is probably much smoother than the road surface here. Sometime I send my car flying and my wife screaming when I couldn’t react in time to avoid a road hump or pot holes.

• I guess driving in the tunnel got to be the most frightening experience of all. The tunnel itself is already narrow, and cars don’t drive within the lane, speed limit is ignored and there’s no road shoulder inside there!

• Traffic jam is very common. Like the congestion that you going thru when you drive from Singapore to Malaysia custom during peak hours.

• Pray hard that on the day you decide to drive, it doesn’t rain. Yes, raining is rare in Cairo, but if it rains, the traffic system will paralyzed. The main reason is poor sewage system and heavy flood after rains.

The list goes on and on……but the scenes of cars driving in reverse gear on a highway will stay with me forever. Sometimes, when the driver took a wrong highway exit, they will “reverse” all the way back to the main road.

However I have to admit that despite those road hazards, Egyptians surely are more willing to give way and help. I have encountered a few times whereby strangers giving me instruction to navigate a tight passing or getting out of the parking space.