Well now that I’ve lived in JHB for a bit longer I think I can comment a bit more on daily JHB driving. Since this is a topic I get asked all the time I shall endevour to make my thoughts clear.

First off, traffic density. I’ve never really had to travel in high density peak hour traffic. However what I remember from going to college and UCT, the traffic in CPT is not any different, in some cases I can confidently say it’s worse. The main difference is that the distances are shorter in CPT so you spend less time in traffic overall. I’ve never travelled on highways in peak hour though I quite often travelled the M5/N1 during office hours, and the off/onramps are much worse in CPT than they are in JHB. Lastly, I do William Nicol everyday, fortunately only a very short section of it. Overall it takes me about 2 minutes max to get through that section. From what I’ve observed, there’s not much difference between William Nicol and Wynberg Main Road (which I travelled every day for 2 years), with the exception being that WNicol is 6 lanes and Wynberg is 2.

Directions. JHB isn’t too difficult to navigate, though everything does look the same (and no, I don’t miss the mountain). Many road are very poorly marked, with those faded b&w roadnames adorning the pavement corners… not very easy to read. The big roads in the main city centers tend to be marked at the top of those roadside “billboards”. I must say that this is quite nice since I can actually read the damn things before I get to the road in question.

Road markings. There are road markings? I tend to rely quite heavily on road markings such as determining which lane I need to be in. However driving around in JHB I’ve noticed that many roads are either unmarked or the markings are so faded that they may as well not be there. This turns general traffic into a free-for-all as people just drive all over the road completely ignoring the “markings”. I’ve also hit a few speed bumps pretty hard because there weren’t any lines on them… yay. Another trend I’ve noticed is that old lines have merged and overlapped with faded new lines, making driving really confusing as it’s sometimes hard to tell if you’re in your lane or straddling 2 lanes as the lines suddenly shift sideways. I’ve almost overshot robots because I was looking at the far robot and didn’t see any lines… great.

Now to drivers. Crap drivers are crap drivers, it doesn’t matter what city you put them in, they’re still crap drivers. That being said the general trend in JHB seems to be far more aggressive drivers. I quite often get tailgated in rush hour traffic; everyone is moving at 40 or 50kph but no, the guy behind me has to speed around me into the cruising gap I left and then suddenly brake hard because he’s going a good 30kph faster than everyone else. All that’s happening is you’re wasting petrol for the time you didn’t save since you’re going to get stuck at the offramp robot anyways. Unfortunately most drivers tend to indicate as, or after they change lanes, or not at all, and with the amount of lane changing going on I can see why so many bikers get knocked down; mirrors? blindspots? apparently not.

Though, bikers… well I’m struggling to have any sympathy for them. The way some of those guys ride in traffic makes you wonder how much their life insurance policy is worth. Usually bikers split between the fast and the middle lane, with the general rule of thumb being 20kph faster than the surrounding traffic. Apparently many N1 bikers didn’t get that memo. I’ve seen plenty of them weaving in and out of traffic at crazy speeds, not to mention the bikers that treat the emergency lanes as their personal highways and cruise down those at highway speeds.

There’s much more to say on the topic, but this is all I have for now. I almost got taken out by a taxi this morning, he must’ve missed the part where they teach you to yield to the right.