Last weekend, I did what hundreds, if not thousands, or indeed hundreds of thousands of Budapest city dwellers do every Sunday in the summer – I drove back from the Balaton.
Driving in Hungary at the best of times can be unnerving. Patience is not a national virtue, at least not for those sitting on a few tonnes of metal, with a steering wheel in their hands, and the potential for speed underneath their feet. Üllői út is a favourite inner-city racetrack for boy racers and I have lost count of the number of times I’ve had my daydreams interrupted by the screech of tyres and the clash of gears as cars built for autobahns forget they’re driving the korut.
I’d heard tell of the nightmare that many endure coming back from a weekend’s R&R but I’d never experienced it first-hand. We left Fonyód about 3.30 pm to avoid the traffic, hoping that no one else had the same bright idea. And we did fine at first on the motorway until, when doing the requisite 110 (or was it 130?), I rounded a curve to be met by the flashing tail lights of the car in front of me. Thankfully there were enough chevrons between us to avoid collision but I swear I nearly had a heart-attack.
As we crawled forward, I waited expectantly to pass a crash or a police check, or something that would explain the sudden slow-down of traffic. But nothing. Five minutes later, we were back on track and it was full speed ahead.
Then it happened again, and again, and again. And I can’t for the life of me figure out what was going on. I thought it might have been merging traffic from the on-ramps, but no. I thought it might have been a speed camera, but that wouldn’t explain going from 110 (or was it 130?) to 40 in two seconds flat. But what did suddenly make sense was the high number of accidents on that road each summer. This sort of erratic driving can’t be good for the nerves, and after a weekend baking in the sun, who has every brain cell alert and engaged?
I had time, as we inched along, to clock the cars and noticed that many city cars (compacts and economies in rental-car terminology) were competing, or trying to compete, with high horsepower vehicles that could probably outrace most cop cars, given a clear road and good conditions. This unequal power match leads to more unsafe driving.
I was in an immaculately kept 18-year-old Honda and when I moved to an empty left lane to overtake a Fiat contemporary, I suddenly had an Audi A7 up my ass. He came out of nowhere and was so close to my tail it was personal, intimate even, if not obscene. I was tempted to brake and see where he’d end up … but it wasn’t my car.
Nearer to Budapest, a BMV flew up the on ramp and diagonally crossed four lanes seamlessly. No indicator. No rear-mirror check. Just a bald, arrogant claim to the road that said more about his personality (and yes, it was a he) than anything. And again, the number of fatalities began to make sense.
According to the International Road Traffic Accident Database, Hungarian motorways are 8 times more dangerous than UK motorways, and twice as dangerous as Belgian and Austrian motorways. In contrast, in Germany, where there are no speed limits, it’s twice as safe to drive as in Belgium or Austria and three times as safe in Hungary. So if it’s not speed that’s killing people, could it be attitude?
First published in the Budapest Times 25 July 2014
12 Responses
On the motorway remember Proverbs 2:11 ‘Discretion shall preserve thee, understanding shall keep thee’. As a practising devout coward, I stay off them in Hungary, those to the west are quite enough excitement. But what causes this apparently erratic stop-start is not necessarily an accident, but simply someone braking and causing the car behind to brake slightly more, and when the road is busy the effect can build up until somewhere cars actually stop completely.
Hard to believe that’s all it takes but it must be so as nothing else makes sense
Mathematicians have proved it (http://phys.org/news117283969.html ), that a single car can cause these mysterious traffic jams, by just braking too hard. Some of the researchers came from the university where I studied, so it was quite big news in Budapest back then.
Don’t doubt you, Vikor. It’s still hard to believe.
And the mathematician quoted is a Hungarian!!
I first drove in Hungary in 1998. It was nerve racking even then. But at least in 1998 most of cars were Communist ear Skodas, Ladas or Trabants (i.e. slow and of limited mass so could not cause to much damage in a collision). I even myself drove a Trabant from time to time in Hungary.
It got even worse when the modern cars started appearing in numbers. Not only are they larger (and more massive — think basic physics in a collision), but can go much faster than any Trabant could with its “pedal to the metal”. And I am convinced the driving quality of the locals seems to have actually gone from bad to worse in the past decade and a half. I have lost count of the number of times I have seen people here pass on blind curves, at hill tops or countless other dangerous maneuvers. And it seems to be infectious — cars with non-Hungarian license plates seem to do things here (copying the local driving habits) they would never do in their home countries.
That is why, over the years, more and more, when I can, I take a train.
Agree about the infectiousness of it all. And yes, had a close call on a back road at the brow of a hill… madness
Oh! Scary. Best wishes that you always have safe journeys.
You’re quite right about the standard of Hungarian driving – determined overtaking and cutting corners are the hallmarks. It does seem odd, though, when one considers the 30 hours of schooling with final theoretical exam that precede the on-road test. Education, education, education?
I heard tell (first hand) of an Irish guy who passed his driving test with the help of a bottle of palinka donated to the examiner. It worried me then – it worries me now 🙂
I have thought about this quite a lot actually. This is how I have worked it out so far in my mind:
The individual has been educated, but society level education has failed (or was never even tried).
For example, if you educate the individual that 1+1=2, but then when that person leaves school and finds that society at large tells them that 1+1=3 they can but adapt, leave the country or go crazy. Literally Orwellian, without having to invoke any particular political dogma.
The palinka to pass story I believe. The test are now done electronically, with instant scores, and a lot of the testing centers were closed and consolidated recently to also avoid “local favors” (I know people who had to travel much further recently to take a driving tests because of this). But, I can think of more than one way people could still defeat the current system.