OK, I’ve now been in Belgium for over a year, so I think I’m qualified to make a few comments without being dismissed as a ‘newbie’ who needs to learn to adapt. There are some aspects of driving in Belgium that I just can’t adapt to. Three of them, in fact:
(1) Giving way to the right. The rule is that if you’re driving along a main road, and a car is joining the road from a side-road on the right, you need to give way. Unless of course there is a solid white line or a series of tiny triangles painted across the side-road (and you can see these as you zip down the road at 90kph), or a yellow diamond sign on the main road (and the traffic on the sidestreet can somehow see this as well). Fair enough, it’s a good ‘traffic calming’ measure if nothing else, and it saves you getting stuck on a sideroad all day (traffic lights being way too difficult to master). So I know (and accept) that traffic joining from the right has priority, but it really burns my ass when people just drive straight out at 60kph without even checking first to see if anything is coming, with a look of sanctimonious impunity on their face as I fight to control a skid whilst peering over the top of the airbag…
(2) Belgians’ apparent inability to drive in rain. Every time it rains, there are countless accidents on the Ring around Brussels, which means that all traffic city-wide (and around 20km in each direction) grinds to a standstill. Why?? This is Belgium. It rains on a very regular basis, so a quick shower shouldn’t really take people by surprise: “Oh my god! There’s this stuff falling from the sky! I can’t drive in this! Abort. Abort!”. And it’s not even as if it’s real rain – it’s just that depressing drizzly kind of rain they get a lot over here. They should try Singapore-style tropical rainstorms where you can’t see the front of your own car, let alone the back of the car in front – then they’ll know what it’s really like to drive – and drive effectively – in rain.
(3) Motorway intersections (junctions). Please, someone tell me where is the wisdom in having traffic coming onto the motorway join the road before the traffic leaving the motorway can turn off? You just end up with twice as many cars in a very short stretch of road than you really need, as they all try to switch lanes (sometimes across four at once), which is just an accident waiting to happen. Literally. And it often does. I’m sure that if they built the intersections along the British model, where traffic leaves first to make room for those that are joining, traffic would move much more quickly and there would be a lot less accidents. Still, what can you expect from a country that used to give priority to traffic joining a roundabout, and where pedestrians only had priority on a pedestrian crossing if they managed to make eye contact with the driver and clearly signaled their intent to use said crossing.
Still, at least they don’t have toll roads (like the U.S.), congestion charges (like London), or Electronic Road Pricing (like Singapore), so I guess it’s not as though I’m actually paying to be pissed off…
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