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Monday, February 11, 2008

Driving in the DF: Mad Max would be proud

By Jeremy Schwartz | Monday, February 11, 2008, 11:55 AM

I finally earned my Mexico City stripes last week: I drove the Federal District’s streets for the first time, and at rush hour no less. In the nearly two years Nancy and I have lived here we’ve simply never had the need to drive. Taxis, buses and the city’s usually-efficient subway system make navigating the city a virtual breeze. We don’t see much of a need to add yet another car to the city’s six million vehicles and its mind numbing traffic jams.

And as anyone who has visited the megalopolis can attest, driving here is not for the weak of heart. I’m from Boston, a city notorious for bad drivers (we would say “aggressive”) and I have never encountered anything like this. Mexico City drivers make New Yorkers look like little old ladies.

Drivers regularly clump into four lanes when there should only be three, think nothing of turning left from the right lane across multiple lanes of traffic and nose their front bumpers into the exhaust pipes of the guy in front of them. Anyone who can’t keep up is hounded into submission with constant horns and withering glares. Rotaries resemble a death cage match out of Beyond Thunderdome. The rules are simple: if you can get away with it, it’s OK.

So it was with a mixture of excitement and dread that I rented a car to drive to nearby Queretaro for a story there. We began the journey at 4 p.m., the beginning of Mexico City’s maniacal rush hour.

We took Reforma, Mexico City’s version of Congress Avenue, and lurched our way through near-gridlock. Once I got over the amazement that I was actually driving in this madhouse, I got to the business at hand: maneuvering past Mexico City’s peseros, city buses driven by raging lunatics who think nothing of bullying into your lane if they think they can save a couple seconds off their route.

All was going as well as could be until I arrived at our turn off for the Periferico, a traffic-choked loop that circles the city. Once on the Periferico we were presented with another challenge: getting gas. The diabolical fiends at the rental agency had given me a Jeep with less than a quarter tank and I began having nauseating visions of running out of gas as we idled in the full blown rush hour traffic. I had to exit onto the equally crowded access road to reach a Pemex, Mexico’s nationalized gas station chain.

Exiting, I came face to face with perhaps Mexico’s greatest road system perversion: the lack of merge lanes. To get off the highway I had to navigate the Jeep into oncoming traffic that had no intention of slowing, let alone stopping. Luckily, I remembered one of Mexico City’s driving maxims - might makes right - and simply barreled my way in front of a much smaller sedan. The driver appeared to let loose a stream of curses and I knew I had arrived.

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