Rules of the Road

So I mentioned cars in one of the first blogs I wrote, and since I have had a bit of chance to observe the driving in Adelaide I thought it would be a good time to talk about this some more. Cars, roads and the attitude of drivers towards each other and pedestrians are actually some of the key differences to the UK that I have found, although it is not as different in some areas as you might have been lead to believe.

Adelaide is arranged in a grid system and by and large is controlled by traffic lights. It is not impossible to find that you only have to make your own decision about whether to pull out of a junction or move forward about once a day. There aren't a huge amount of roundabouts either; these tend to be confined to suburban roads. I don't think I've seen anything on the scale of, say, The Shepherd and Flock near Farnham.

In general the roads are pretty good around the city, although they do deteriorate as you come out of the town and towards the hills, but from what I have seen so far they really aren't that bad; much better than some of the equivalent roads in the UK I can think of in fact. What is almost universally good is the width of the roads. Because Adelaide is a planned city, the vast majority of roads are predominantly straight and more than wide enough for all kinds of traffic. It sort of looks like a small American city in that regard (although I am only going from what I have seen of the US on television) or Milton Keynes.It is vastly more spacious in terms of driving than most of London, Guildford, Portsmouth, Birmingham or anywhere I can think of apart from MK. But hang on, you might say. London has some very wide roads. Of course it does, but in general there are three lanes of traffic. The norm for Adelaide is two, with three only on the main arterial routes and ring roads, if at all. The only bit of "motorway" I have been on is definitely no wider or longer the the M275 and only goes in one direction. From what I understand it switches the direction of travel between  the rush hours to carry the larger volumes of commuters. I hate to get that one wrong at change over time!

One of the more constant bits of criticism you hear from ex pats is that the driving in South Australia is a bit rough and ready and that the traffic is terrible. Stories of people almost being run off the road by Utes kitted out with bull bars and of SA drivers racing between every set of lights, revving their engines and honking at anyone who gets in their way or doesn't react to the lights going green like Mark Webber on a Sunday afternoon. Now personally, I don't subscribe to this. I have driven for around 1000km in and around Adelaide at all times of day in a variety of different hire cars and I have never witnessed any really shocking driving at all. To be fair, I am pretty difficult to intimidate behind the wheel of a car so perhaps I am not the best judge, but it is nothing compared to Dalston High Street at 2pm on a Friday afternoon, or Tower Bridge Road at 8am on a Monday morning or the M25 at virtually any time of day or night. As far as traffic goes, you can pretty much take the previous examples and halve the congestion and you are about right for the worst conditions in Adelaide on a busy day. I think that reason for this lack of serious congestion is three fold:

1. All the streets are pretty much long straights.
2. Everything is controlled by traffic lights, and pedestrian crossings etc. definitely take a back seat.
3. A lot of the major arteries have "no right turn" restrictions at rush hours. This means that you don't lose a lane with traffic turning right. It's a pain of you happen to need to do that, but since everything is on a grid, you can always find another way around quite easily.

The key difference in the driving experience for me is the lack of awareness of other road users intentions, that all car drivers seem to display. Imagine you are going through London on a long straight road and you need to change line. Both lines of traffic are moving at roughly the same speed and you just need the guy behind and to your right to decelerate a little to let you in. Now in the UK one of three things will happen:

1. The other car will completely ignore you and effectively block you. You have to either miss your turning, slam on your brakes, or make a fairly aggressive move.
2. The other car will see you want to move, and speed up so as not to get caught behind you, but begrudgingly make room.
3. The other car will slow up a bit a with a cheery flash lights let you through.

I admit that option 3 is unlikely in most cases, but it does happen. In Adelaide only option 1 ever applies. No one ever lets you out of a junction, gives you the option of changing lanes or anything else similar under any circumstances. This is not done aggressively at all; it is obviously just not part of the road culture here, but I found myself missing a couple of turnings before I understood this. Interestingly enough the pedestrians also walk around like this. People do not move out of the way or give space to anyone else, the path they are taking is the path they follow, without exception. It is like being in a supermarket in the UK on pension day, it really is.

I've also mentioned this before, but the Australians love a V8. I can't put a definite figure on this, but I would estimate that 10% of vehicles have V6 or V8 engines. The sound track of Monday morning commuter traffic is something to behold, it really is. I really wanted an electric car in the UK, but that sense of environmental conscientiousness is being eroded away steadily to the point that what I really want is a V8 Holden! Also, there seems to be a preference for automatic transmissions here. I am normally not a fan of autos and I have driven a lot of them; some of the finest (BMW 5-series and Ferrari F430) and some of the worst (Austin Montego). I have only ever owned a car with one by choice once, and I swore never to do it again. But, as with the electric car, I am finding my mind being changed. In fact I'll go on record and state that not only have I not driven a manual over here, I have actually paid extra when given the choice to hire an auto. Neither are sentiments that anyone who knows me would have expected me to express. I think that it is the long straight roads and lack of actual corners that make this work. The first time we drove out of the city and encountered a bend in the road it was actually a little disconcerting. I could see myself buying and getting on with an auto here.

There is a pretty lively scene in classic cars, but the lean is towards American and Australian muscle cars rather than crappy British sports cars. Sunday is the day that many people get out in their Chevy Impalas, Holden Commodores or Dodge Chargers and go for a drive. I love seeing this; there is a refreshing lack of tweed and beards and a lot of chrome, V8's and sunshine.

The other thing that I really love is the trucks. Almost universally they are based on American style Kenworth tractor units. If you don't know what this is then think Smokey and the Bandit or Convoy. Zach and I were literally beside ourselves with excitement when we saw our first big lorries, although it is worth mentioning that the standard single trailer trucks are, like their American counterparts, actually smaller than the standard European articulated lorries. The double trailered "road trains" are impressive though, and they don't hang about. There must be different noise restrictions particularly with commercial vehicles as they are loud to my ears. They also run 24/7. As the motel we stayed in when we first arrived was literally next to the main access road into Adelaide we lost countless hours of sleep because of this. It was even louder than when I lived on the A3 a mile south of the Hindhead lights, unlikely as this may sound. In fact, as I type this it is 03.41am, blowing a gale, and I can still hear the occasional truck on Portrush Road, which is around 500m away.

So we can say that Adelaide is a well designed city which caters admirably for the motor cars, lorries, buses and trams that ferry people and goods around. The roads are quite nice and it is all managed with some sensible traffic management policies that keep everyone moving freely. There is a downside though: It is a bugger being a pedestrian.

Any country that has drive through off licences has to be dedicated to the motor car. You may think that pedestrians in the UK are treated with contempt by drivers but they are given a lot more priority by the British Government than I original thought.. For example, there are no "on demand" pedestrian crossings in Adelaide with the exception of near some schools and even then there aren't any traffic lights to enforce this. On many roads it is almost impossible to think of crossing anywhere else other than a designated pedestrian crossing and these are few and far between, and jaywalking is not just inadvisable, but also illegal. This means that if you are coming out of a shop on one side of the road and want to go into a shop on the opposite side you will almost definitely have to walk 100 metres to the next crossing and come back down. Also, all pedestrian crossings are phased in with the normal traffic lights, so when traffic joining from the side is released so are the pedestrians. There is no separate phase for people to cross, although they do have right of way in this case, so the drivers pull forward as far towards the pedestrians as they can and stare at them in disbelief as they cross. Also, if you arrive at a set of lights during a phase where you would normally cross and no-one has pressed the button the pedestrian lights always stay red until the next cycle. Basically, you spend a lot of time standing at lights. Remember, most junctions are crossroads; if you are walking south to the bus stop and are on the wrong (eastern in this case) side of the road you will always have to cross two roads to get on the right track. I think my record for crossing a main junction is something like 15 minutes, and no I am not exaggerating at all, literally 15 mins. You really do have to factor in that time when you are going anywhere, like catching a bus for example. I have missed loads just because of the amount of time I have spent waiting to  cross the road!

The public transport here is pretty good. An all day ticket costs $8.80 and takes you everywhere in and around the city (usually to the nearest towns as well) and includes the trams which run through the heart of the city and out to the beach. On Saturdays and school holidays Zach travels free if he is with an adult with an all day ticket, which does save you money. All public transport is clean and mostly modern and well maintained (did have one bus with a clutch that was definitely on the way out. It would have been quicker and significantly less smelly to walk that journey) and as such it seems that people seem to respect this. There is no graffiti and to be honest I have only had to sit next to the Aussie equivalent of the drunk Glaswegian twice. Even the teenagers are unfailingly polite.

Finally, what I love most of all about driving and cars in Adelaide also acts as a prime example of how much context matters in different cultures, and how, with the right approach, the Australians can take something that doesn't work in Britain and make it something truly brilliant:

Personalised number plates

Now there is nothing wrong with personalised number plates in the UK. If you happen to live in Chesire or near Guildford I can see the point of advertising that you have so much excess wealth that you feel the need to announce to other road users that either you are arrogant enough to think anyone else cares what your initials are or you are so profoundly dyslexic that you think a random assortment of letters and numbers will mean anything significant to other road users. The only exception to this is when your number plate actually spells something meaningful without having to use black screw caps to turn an "11" into an "H". I can think of three that I have seen in the UK that I genuinely admired. One belonged to Richard Attenborough, one to someone I worked for and another to a bloke that was known for lightly stabbing people in pubs. Interestingly enough the first was on a Rolls Royce and the others were on Range Rovers.

This is how the Australians get it right: they allow a variety of different customisation options which include different coloured plates and a fully customisable seven letter registration mark.

For the first few weeks I was staggered by the amount of them that I saw, and they were using actual letters and spelling out actual words (or though some of the more creative ones were also amusing). So I googled and discovered that not only is this all legal and above board, it is called "Ezyplate" and it is government run. There is a website where you can type in your chosen phrase and find out immediately if it is available and then register it online; they even tell you the last order date before Christmas. Not only that, it only costs a couple of hundred dollars a year! What this means is that virtually everyone can afford to do it and they can actually chose a meaningful word or phrase that is completely legible to everyone else. It takes the exclusivity and therefore the pretension out of the whole thing.

See for yourself. Follow the link below, select custom plate and have some fun. But please, please, please post your favourites in the comments section to this blog. I might even register the best one when I get a car.

http://www.transport.sa.gov.au/ezyplates/pickaplate/ezyplates_app.htm

.....Yes Gary, the plates "Shocker" and "Player" are both available.

Here are a few that I've seen on the road.

Obie 1  - (Obviously a Star Wars fan)
Tree Doc - on a tree surgeons Ute
Penny 7

I'll sign off with my personal favourite:

PS. All taxis have the word "TAXI" followed by their operator number instead of a normal registration mark. It takes some of the guess work out of finding a cab after a night out.