Cairo: Traffic Impressions

Cairo though the windshield: Seeing the largest city in the Middle East the way most tourist don't

When my friend Katy learned that I was coming to Egypt, she told me that her sister Louise, brother-in-law Brian and two neices are living here and put us in touch. E-mail is a wondrous thing. I wrote to Louise, who replied quickly and invited me over for dinner this evening (Friday) and sent a driver to pick me up at my hotel just six hours after I arrived. What a wonderful chance to meet some worldly expats. Ibrahim, a Filipino and therefore also an expat, picked me up and drove me to the Maadi area. We drove many miles outward from the city center, which took about an hour and gave me a chance to see the non-touristic side of Cairo. En route in whatever direction we were heading (Ibrahim didn't know), I noticed:

• Streetlights are yellow-ish rather than glaring white. Advertising signs are affixed partway up the lampposts on arterials in residential areas. Coupled with wicked, visible air pollution, the impression is a gray-yellow gloom. Stores are illuminated with glaring fluorescents that are far brighter than the streetlights.


• Very few traffic lights and even fewer traffic cops -- and then only at a few major intersections. Drivers don't pay strict attention to either.


• Vehicle lights are random. Drivers might use headlights (one sometimes broken), parking lights or no lights at all.


• Replacing some red tail lights and/or white parking lights with blue lights is a favorite example of automotive decoration. Really tricked-out cars have additional trim of alternating red and blue lights on the sides.


• The vast majority of cars have something dangling from the rearview mirror.


• On major arterials, four lanes of traffic where there should be three -- if lines have been painted at all. Also if there are actual lines, straddling one rather than driving between two is common, Motorscooters are a bonus. Helmets? What helmets?


• Broken-down cars are common in the right lane -- and occasionally even the left lane. Some are abadoned where they died; others have their hoods up and the driver and perhaps onlookers staring balefully at the engine.


• The farther from the airport or the city center, the more signs are only in Arabic.


• Instead of traffic circles or left turn lanes on divided roads, drivers make U-turns from the left lane. This creates sudden traffic jams when drivers in the two left lanes wait for the smallest break in oncoming traffic.


• Double and triple parking is the rule. Add cars stacked up for a left turn to the parked cars, and four lanes quickly neck down to two.


• Obeying one-way signs seems to be at the drivers' discretion.


• Whether the traffic is moving or inching along, drivers perform astonishing lane-changing feats.


• Horns are used as alerts ("I'm about to cut you off"), as explanations ("I just cut you off because I could") or automotive conversation ("Same to you, buster!")


• There are no crosswalks (though in fairness, people wouldn't pay attention anyway). Pedestrians cross where ever they wish and pose an extra challenge, especially when said pedestrians are fully veiled women in head-to-toe black who are camouflaged in the dark night.

I saw signs for rental-car agencies. Would I ever? Not on your life.