30 Days of Driving

Ah driving. It is a very liberating feeling to finally have the license to operate a motor vehicle. Having had my license about a month ago, I took the opportunity to rent a car for about a month to drive around and get used to the road experience. And this entry chronicles the sights, sounds and experiences that I had from that little foray.

Driving in Singapore is a rather mixed bag of emotions; more often than not, the primary dominating emotion is that of anger. That's right, it is anger; not mine, but that of the other drivers. Armed with probational plates as a part of the law regarding newly minted qualified driver license holders, it simultaneously becomes a safe way of indicating the inexperience of the driver as well as an invitation for the more aggressive drivers to ``bully'' the new driver through intimidation techniques. I wasn't really fazed by their intimidation attempts, though it is rather unnerving when an aggressive driver keeps tailgating the car that I was driving. The speed limits of the roads were not something that most people seem to adhere to---each time I was travelling at the speed limit, every other car seems to just speed off in front of me, with excess speeds ranging from 10km/h or more. In fact, many drivers who wre following behind my car got so frustrated that I wasn't busting the speed limit that they ended up tailgating me for a while before dodging off to the left or right in an attempt to overtake me.

Drivers aside, the roads of Singapore are not very forgiving either. Granted that there are few tricky intersections to worry about, there are still many oddities of the roads that make driving a less-than-desirable experience. Extreme heavy traffic is one classic example of this. The arterial roads of Singapore are often full of traffic during the peak hours, and the mean speed of such roads drop from the standard of 70km/h to something along the lines of 40km/h, assuming that it is merely a heavy traffic condition and not some traffic jam, in which case the mean speed can fall to as low as 20km/h, uphill.

But I suppose that the best way to go about driving in Singapore is to be really comfortable with oneself and to understand that not all drivers are law-abiding---the most important thing about driving is to avoid causing or being in an accident, and I suppose that if that is met, it will guarantee one's survival on the road. Of course the law just provides a more stringent measure of what safety means, and more often than not, it is a good idea to follow it. But of course one needs to be flexible and adapt to the circumstance.