h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

When I first raised the subject of driving in Portugal with UK companions who had been here I was inforemd that even 'Italians are scared to drive in Portugal'! Stereotyped, possibly - but worrying as I had just survived, but only just, a rush through a Neapolitan bus and rail strike to make the airport. The Taxi literally threw the book out of the window, threw handbreak turns, took short cuts through docks and US military bases (well one of the later) but we made the plane.

A little time later I find myself living in Portugal, Lisbon to be exact and after a few months can offer a little more insight into the Portuguese driving Phenomenon.

One thing that you must remember about the Portuguese People is that they are genuinely one of the nicest people on earth, they are just a little left of centre when it come to European ways of doing things. I must stress I mean this in no disrespect. The UK is the classic example of an island Nation in Europe and some think the only example, they are however wrong. Portugal is only joined to Europe via Spanish soil and they do not interact with the Spanish much (imagine if England was land-locked to France), so Portugal is in effect an Island within Europe. They could not go East into Spain, so their culture, and their exploits went west and south and their contacts with the South American Culture remain.

This may have little to do with their driving you may think, but you’d be wrong. The Portuguese are above all else a tremendously unworried nation, they have a free thinking and free feeling attitude that I as a stranger in their mist have found both warm and welcoming, however this same attitude in someone behind the wheel of a car is not necessarily the safest.

Portuguese drivers are not aggressive - like the British, they are not driven by machismo - like the French and Spanish, they do not believe that everyone will know there mind and move away from them - like the Italians. They are simply a happy people who occasionally fail to see break lights or stop signals.

I have a five minute walk to work in Lisbon and see, on average, three to four crashes a week, but in the four months that I have been here I have never seen one result in a cross word, let alone violence. I have never seen an injury or a pedestrian hurt, I am sure these things happen, but all I can offer as evidence is what I see with my own eyes.

Suffice to say, I feel safer walking the streets of Lisbon than I have done almost anywhere else on Earth.

GoatBoater