Driving in the Dominican Republic

In Lonely Planet’s Dominican Republic guide (you gotta have one traveling), under the “Road Rules” section, the first sentence says, “The first rule is that there are none.” This is a true statement. I have never seen a speed limit sign, but they do have many speed bumps. Stopping at stoplights is optional and only depends on if people are coming from the other direction. Lonely Planet also says, “Driving in the DR is pretty much a free-for-all, a test of ones’ nerves and will, a continuous series of games of chicken where the loser is the oine who decides to give way just before the moment of impact.”

One thing I find really funny is that the second a light turns green people honk. Literally the light will be green for a split second and there will be a half dozen people honking. In the US people generally leave minimum 3 or 4 seconds for a person to start going, sometimes maybe even longer to be polite. In the DR, some people even honk before the light turns green. A Swedish teacher at a Haitian church here in the DR said that someone honked at him before the light turned green. He said he got out of his car and asked the guy why he honked, and the Dominican said, “I just wanted to make sure you didn’t forget to go.”

I travel a lot by motoconcho which is a motorcycle taxi. The way to flag a motoconcho down is not by yelling. You can wave your hand, but the best way is to either whistle or do a loud “pppsssssss.”

One of my favorite moves is the old “drive on the other side of the road” trick. This works well because motorcycles can easily weave through traffic. When someone wants to turn left ahead and knows they will have to wait but see a gap before they get to the intersection, they will turn left and ride on the wrong side of the road so they won’t have to wait. This is particularly annoying when crossing busy streets because it means you have to look-both-ways basically the whole time you are crossing the street. I have found this out the hard way, crossing half of the street and then running across the other half looking for traffic one way and having people honk at me from the other direction. Not cool!

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