Traffic in Lima, aka Tengo Miedo

As I mentioned earlier, our walk to school is about 20-25 minutes. On our first day, one of our housemates walked us to school so we’d know the way. I was surprised at how big the streets were, how crazy the traffic was, and how hard it was just to cross the street. This, especially, since our Peru guidebook specifically mentions how the streets in our neighborhood are "pedestrian-friendly." Ha!

In the States, generally, the pedestrian is king. Cars may be annoyed with you if you step out in their path, but they’ll stop. They don’t grant you that courtesy here. If you’re out in the path of the cars/trucks/buses and you don’t scramble to get out of their way, well, good luck getting to the hospital.

Lanes and traffic lights seem to be mere suggestions for how to behave rather than a law to be followed. In the middle of heavy traffic, I’ve seen any number of right hand turns from the left lane, left turns from the right lane, and left turns – across multiple lanes of traffic – on red. Cars pull out in front of trucks that are barreling down on them. Motorcycles have narrowly missed hitting me on the sidewalk as they buzz around us pedestrians to jump ahead of cars and buses at lights. And last night a car drove on the sidewalk to skirt some of the heavy traffic! Somehow this works; we’ve only seen the aftermath of one accident so far. You could not pay me to drive in this traffic! (And for some odd reason there are lots of people who feel comfortable riding bicycles or even skateboarding in this chaos!)

The image that perfectly encapsulates this for me right now is a crosswalk sign. Picture the traffic sign for a crosswalk in the States. It’s a quasi-stick figure adult and child, walking across the street, right? Here’s the crosswalk sign in Lima.

Note that the stick figures are sprinting. Someone brilliant has also stuck a sticker on the bottom that says, “Tengo miedo”, which means “I’m scared.” Me too!