Tips for Driving in Mexico and Not Crashing

hey everybody q rupaul here from two expats mexico welcome to the channel you know if you compare the driving laws between mexico and the united states you're gonna see that they're very similar but ask anyone who's driven in both countries for any length of time if people drive the same way and they're going to be like uh no not so much so why is that well it really comes down to culture you see culture is more than just what food you eat and language it's how people interact with each other and that transfers over into how you interact with other motorists as well so if you're not from mexico but you're driving in mexico those motorists there are going to expect you to react in a certain way to certain things that occur on the roadway because that's the driving culture if you don't know the driving culture your chances of being involved in an accident definitely increase so in this video i'm going to be teaching you some fundamentals of the driving culture in mexico so as i go through these tips it's important to keep in mind that driving culture often conflicts with traffic laws that happens in the us too you'll see what i mean as i go through these all right let's get started first thing you should know is the designated lane markers don't really mean much here you have to drive in a fluid manner depending on how other traffic is moving and just because a road is only designated for one or two lanes doesn't mean that's how many actual lanes of traffic there will be in fact a two-lane road is probably going to be a three or possibly a four-lane road because people are just going to drive wherever they want that means that you can't be one of those people like you were in the us and you're like this is my lane nobody needs why are you drifting close to my lane get out of here no you can't be like that if traffic drifts towards you into your lane remember it's not really your lane you just kind of compensate by drifting the other way you just have to go with the flow next thing you should know is that in mexico slower traffic really does keep right get out of the way i know we say that in the us but people don't really follow that you can drive down the highway and somebody's always settled in that left lane and they're just like i'm not moving i'm not moving i'm doing five over the limit i'm doing five over the limit that doesn't work in mexico these people really adhere to slower traffic keeps right almost to an extreme so when traffic pulls out if there's a paved shoulder even if it's not wide enough for the vehicle people will often stay over on the shoulder until they picked up enough speed to enter traffic so let's say you have a four lane divided highway that left lane is probably the mexican equivalent of the autobahn this is going to be one of those conflicts i mentioned before between traffic laws and driving culture legally you cannot speed in the left lane culturally however it's kind of like nascar over there [Applause] even if you're speeding and you're in that lane and somebody's going faster behind you they're going to flash their lights at you to let you know that they want to go faster than you you need to get out of the way even if you're passing in this lane if the car behind you wants to pass faster you should get out of the way and then you come back that's just how it works now we're going to put those two things together we're going to talk about how your lanes mean nothing and slower traffic keeps right so on a two-lane highway so i have opposing traffic driving you're going to think well how can i go any more to the right oh people do people do take a look at this if traffic comes up behind you and you want to drive slower the polite thing to do is to actually drive onto the shoulder and that's going to allow the person behind you to be able to see better and have space to pass and this is where things can get a little weird even though you have traffic driving in opposing directions and it's only two lanes sometimes this magical third lane will form in the middle for passing so this is important for you to understand because someone may be passing coming at you and when you see them don't just stay there and play chicken with them drift to the right onto the shoulder allowing them some extra space to make sure they can get back into their lane safely here's another fundamental rule for you road hazards are everywhere you have to stay alert this is not a country where you just play on your phone and drive which you shouldn't be doing that at home anyway but you definitely don't wanna do this to mexico you're gonna hit something or someone or you're gonna damage your vehicle one of the first spanish words that tourists typically learn is tope which is speed bump in spanish and mexico because they are everywhere most of them are marked with paint or a sign but not always you know i mentioned this in another video that they're not always marked and someone from another part of mexico wrote a comment that they are always marked no they're not always marked sometimes there's no paint or no sign or never was but i've i've hit them i've been in cars with people that have hit these things at like 30 40 50 miles an hour and we're basically doing our impression of the dukes of hazard let's talk about pedestrian crossings there's a lot of these in mexico even in the smaller town so you have to pay attention um there may be a sign for it it may be painted on the sidewalk or they could even put this combination of a tope speed bump with the pedestrian crossing like right here in these circumstances the pedestrians have right away i've seen a lot of tourists get confused and not know this for some reason and get stopped by the police so don't be that person while we're talking about road hazards let's talk about infrastructure in mexico sometimes the infrastructure can be a little lacking i've noticed that the government is slow to fix guard rails that have been knocked down by crashed cars or replaced stop signs that might have been knocked down or even fix problems with the road whether it's potholes or if you're in the mountains pieces of the highway just completely washed away you need to always be looking for these things here are some pictures we took when we were driving through baja as you can see there's a washout in that lane it's just a hole that just drops straight down now that's the first sign that we had to warn us there was a hole there so if you're taking the curve too fast you can see how you could easily go off into one of these holes and once we got off that highway we encountered this herd of goats you just never really know what you're going to find alright the next fundamental thing you need to know about driving in mexico is road rage is extremely rare here leave that crap at home don't bring that here so road rage and aggressive driving are definitely part of the u.s driving culture and it's a good example of how driving culture will often conflict with traffic laws in six years in mexico i've never seen a single incident of road rage in fact while i was filming for this particular video i spent about five days driving around and vehicles would cut me off and bicycles would pull out and i watched that happen to other people all day there was not even a single horn in that entire time nobody got angry everybody just adjusted their driving and just kept on going mexico is a really big country in some parts they may blow their horn more than they do here in quintana roo but i've driven all over the country and i have not encountered any road rage i'm going to share a little story from my myself lyndon and i had flown to tijuana and rented a car and we were going to drive down you know and see the wine country over at guadalupe so i get kind of turned around and i get onto an on-ramp that's going into multiple lanes that are entering the united states and those lanes were completely backed up with traffic i was like i do not want to be there so i pulled off the on-ramp and i'm kind of sitting there going what do i do now traffic's starting to pass me you know to go on to those lanes so what i did is i put my car in reverse and i slowly started to back up on the on-ramp and traffic just adjusted to me no one blew their horn other traffic kind of slowed or moved out of my way and i serpentined backwards all the way back until i could get on the main road and then i went the correct way nobody was angry nobody yelled at me it was very pleasurable well that's it for the video this is not everything you need to know to drive in mexico this is just some fundamentals just some things you should know you know to help you understand the driving culture so hopefully knock on wood you don't crash until next time hasta ruego

Channel: Qroo Paul & Linda

Views: 58,952

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Id: KLu1IAh21i8

Length: 8min 2sec (482 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 14 2021