Has your driving gone native?

[usedbustickets]

For those of you living in Turkey and driving a car, can I ask has your driving gone native since you first arrived.  I am not talking about the mad excesses of the lunatic fringe on the road, but do you, for example,:-

Only use your indicators when you knock the indicator stalk by accident?

Never leave a gap any bigger than a fag paper between you and the car in front when waiting at traffic lights etc. or even when driving at 70KM/hr plus?

Make all your mobile calls when behind the wheel?

Never .. EVER courteously acknowledge another driver, when for example they let you into the traffic or wait for you to go through a gap only wide enough for one vehicle?

Believe that any of the car mirrors are only there for makeup or combing your hair? 

Take the attitude that every other person on the road is a muppet, and you should never give a sucker (or a muppet) and even break?   

Are there any other items I have left off my list?  I'd be interested to hear whether you have changed your style or standard of driving (i.e. gone native) or whether like me you continue to curse the bad driving and bad manners and drive in a safe and polite manner as you did in the UK. 

[KKOB]

One of the first things I learnt was that you should never stop at a pedestrian crossing, otherwise you'd get hit up the ar5e by the following vehicle.

[Scunner]

Yep - I quite clearly remember stopping at the one outside the old Gima - the pedestrians started to cross and nearly got mowed down by the car behind me pulling out and round past me!!

The one thing I did adopt was the beeping the second the traffic light changed from red to green! One positive I took from the years of experience was that road rage is plain ridiculous - if someone wants to drive at 5 mph let them, just go past  

[Gary-O]

I regularly sit 10 vehicles back at the traffic lights and when the count down timer gets to 5 i start sounding my horn   

[Menthol]

I have driven for all of 2 weeks in Turkey - to be resumed next week.

Everything you have said is true, UBT but can't say I have adopted any of them .... yet. It's safe to say (or unsafe ...) that you cannot maintain a wholly British driving style or driving from Ovacik into central Fethiye is going to take at least 3 hours.

I learnt about the horror of stopping at a pedestrian crossing to let the bent over old lady with her 6 bags of market shopping cross and the driver behind me nearly shunting into me. And I have learnt to have the revs going in readiness for amber.

I've never been that prone to road rage and having driven up the big hill from Tasyaka to Ovacik and have a lorry coming at you at god-knows-what-speed on your side of the road on several occasions as they overtake 2 lanes of traffic, means I never will. I'm just grateful to have survived.

To others who may not have driven in Turkey yet: do it - it opens up the whole area for you but if I have to warn you about anything, it's try to park somewhere where you can't possibly get blocked in. This happened to me twice - outside Aydem and again on a road that had loads of empty space for parking. Both drivers appeared within 15 minutes and grinned a sort of apology.

[KKOB]

Just remember that there's only one valid reason to scrap a vehicle in Turkey. That's when the horn doesn't work.  

[DonM]

I've never come across any serious road rage in Turkey though. But at 80 I tend to try and keep out of trouble.    

DonM

[Rimms]

I particularly like habit of approaching traffic junctions at about 40mph then at the very last second jamming on your brakes so only 75% of your vehicle protrudes into the oncoming traffic.

Opening car doors onto passing traffic.

Double or even triple parking.

We didn't have a car for our first two years here and only got one a few weeks ago, it's like driving in one of those xbox video games.   

[KKOB]

Do you know the difference between red and green ?

F***all according to Turkish drivers !

 

[Jacqui Harvey]

Yes and when there is a lane on the right specifically to get in to turn right, everyone gets in it just to try and get past the the people in the correct lane who are going straight ahead.
Having said this, Phil, has become a Turkish driver when we are over.  He no longer adopts the sedate British way to drive and is just as bad as the other drivers. He reckons this is the only way to drive in Turkey.