Driving

Reminds me of cruising around the roads of the Domican Republic a few years back.

Michael Totten:

Today we drove along the six-lane coastal highway north toward Beirut during a rain storm. Some of the deeper dips in the road were totally flooded. So the drivers ahead of us turned around and came at us in our own lane. (They couldn’t make u-turns because the highway is divided.) All of a sudden I saw headlights coming straight at us – and fast. Okay then. I stopped the car and turned around in an instant. Drivers behind me saw what I did and did the same. The entire highway did a perfectly safe about-face and started moving in the reverse direction toward the nearest exit. We all got off the flooded highway and took a higher and drier road on the side. Traffic kept flowing. Nobody got hurt. The same situation in the United States would have started a traffic jam that backed up for miles and lasted for hours. Even during the evacuation of New Orleans ahead of Hurricane Katrina people only drove on one side of the Interstates. Nothing like that would ever happen in Lebanon. In Lebanon such fates are averted. It’s efficient. It’s safer than you think. And it’s fun.