Most Americans that I know in Belgium drive everywhere.
I don’t.
Oh sure, when our car is available, I’ll drive to familiar locations in my own community, but I don’t go far. I use the public transit system to get around and most of the time, that’s OK. Of course, as yesterday’s post reveals, sometimes it’s a complete and total pain in the ass, especially if I have my kids along. They’re good sports, but the combination of unexpected delays, extensive walking, and hauling things in all kinds of weather is not for the faint of heart.
So why don’t I drive in Belgium? The short answer is I don’t want to, though there are practical considerations as well.
Most American expats in Brussels are associated with the U.S military or State Department, and exempt from Belgian car taxes. Unfortunately, we’re not. In the short time we’ve been here, the taxes we’ve paid have exceeded the Blue Book value of the car itself. Our 1999 Oldsmobile costs about $1,400 a year just to park in the driveway. My regular readers have read about $200 oil changes and the long waits and expense of auto repairs here. We’ve been unwilling to buy a second car just because we don’t want twice the headaches and expense of the first one. Since my husband takes the car to work each day, that doesn't leave me with anything to drive, assuming of course, I wanted to drive.
Why wouldn't I want to drive? Lots of reasons. Not only are there different traffic rules here regarding right-of-way, there are also different traffic customs and problems. A lot of driving defensively is not just knowing what the traffic rules are but anticipating how people will bend and break them. You have to know what they might do, not just what they should do. This makes it nerve-wracking for people like me who just drop into a new culture.
It’s rare to see a stop sign in Belgium. Why? Because cars entering a road from the right normally have priority (right of way) over cars already on the road. Stop and think about this. Imagine yourself driving down a street or road having to constantly watch out for cars pulling out in front of you from the right. They don’t slow down and yield to you, they pull straight out in the street from the right. It’s your job to watch and brake for them, not theirs to watch for you.
Visibility is a big issue—you can barely see some of the side streets when you’re driving let alone ascertain whether someone is barreling down them toward the road you're driving on. Priority-on-the-right freaks me out and makes for a very dynamic driving scene.
And then there’s the challenge of navigation. Belgium does not have an official language. The two primary languages are Flemish, a Dutch dialect, and French. As the debate in the U.S. heats up over having an “official” language, let me tell you what it’s like not having one. Here each “commune” (the Belgian phrase for community or town) has decides what its common language will be. In that commune, all the legal documents, bills, signs, schools, and public services will be in that language. You can travel a a few miles or even just cross a street and be in an area with a different language. As a result, street signs, traffic signs, warning signs, and even city names will change as you drive along.
Many of the streets are very old and pre-date the automobile era. This is why they’re really narrow, they curve, and they’re not typically laid out on a grid. People parking on the two-way streets effectively reduce them to one way streets with cars traveling in opposite directions playing chicken with each other.
I won’t even go into the lack of street signs, the confusing highway signs, the weird way exits go umarked or disappear, or the placement and operation of traffic signals at intersections. Let's just say if you don't have a good sense of direction and an even better map, you're screwed. I have no sense of direction and trouble reading maps. Thank God E compensates for my deficiencies.
Obviously, these aren’t insurmountable challenges. Most Americans here won’t let anything separate them from the freedom driving a car brings them. But I have a different perspective--because I’m cautious and because I've been jinxed.
In the six months before I moved to Belgium, I was involved in three accidents where I was rear-ended by someone who was either following too closely or not paying attention at all.
The worst accident was the first. I was stopped to make a left-hand turn and was rear-ended by a tractor trailer going almost 40 mph. It sounded like an explosion, and my car was totaled. I wasn’t seriously injured but as you’d expect, I was seriously shaken up and had whiplash. It took nearly three months of treatments and physical therapy to fully recover from that accident and well over a year before all the medical bills and insurance issues were ironed out. It was an enormous hassle all around.
A little over four months after the first accident. I was rear-ended by a teenager switching lanes. That happened just a few days before Christmas. In January, the day after I got my car out of the shop, a woman tapped my brand new bumper in the school parking lot when she hit the accelerator instead of the brake.
Dealing with the American legal and medical system is enough for me, I don’t even want to think about the possibility of being involved in an accident here and getting sucked into endless bureaucracy in another language. I took an expat driving class here and learned that most Americans are in Belgium for four years and most are involved in at least one accident. That little factoid was it for me. That sealed my decison not to put a lot of miles on the car.
So now you know why I walk everywhere, ride the bus, or take the Metro—and why I occasionally have meltdowns over the weather, the changing bus schedules, the safety of the Metro, or the problem of carrying groceries or packages. Life without a car is an entirely different sort of life. I’m glad public transit is relatively cheap and widely available, but that doesn’t mean it’s always easy or fun to use.
August 18, 2006 at 8:37