Boston Driving "Customs" vs. "Laws"

Within 5 minutes of driving on Boston streets, you will realize that all those rules you learned in traffic school simply do not apply here. Let me give you a few examples

Problem: Driver in right hand turn lane realizes that he/she needs to turn left.
Solution: When the light changes, driver guns engine, cuts everyone off and turns left.

Problem: Driver needs to go the wrong way on a one-way street to get to desired destination.
Solution: Back up the road so that your car is at least facing the correct direction.

Problem: Driver wants to make a left hand turn, but there are no breaks in traffic.
Solution: Inch out slowly until traffic stops for you and your left turn.

And all this is done with such prevalence that you might forget that common driving practices are not the same as driving laws. In fact, you might suppose that the only tickets that are issued here are for parking, speeding, and failure to get your car registered. As it turns out that is not entirely true as I learned just yesterday.

I was parallel parked on one side of the street, but I needed to head in the opposite direction. I did a proper lookout. Since there was plenty of space, I simply pulled out across the street and headed the correct direction. I of course did not think anything of the cop across the way who was out of his cop car writing a ticket for someone, but my passenger noticed when the cop signalled for me to pull over. That caught me off guard and I tried to pull over but that's hard on a busy road. While I sat there double parked, waiting for the cop to do something the following conversation went through my head.

"This is crazy," I thought. "I didn't do anything wrong. That cop isn't even in his car. I didn't see him wave me over. Maybe my passenger misunderstand the cop's signal. If I continue to sit here I'm going to get hit by another car. The cop's not even coming. He's like a half a block away. Besides, since when do I stop for cops who are standing by the side of the road just writing out tickets? This isn't Europe you know. "

So I started to drive away because obviously my stopping had been a mistake. Unfortunately just enough time had passed for the cop to get into his car and he came up behind me. At least he waited until there was actually room for me to pull over before he turned on his lights.

As it turns out I did an illegal U-turn. Is there such a thing in Boston? He says there were signs everywhere, but I was parked and couldn't see a sign. Then there's the whole issue of my crossing a double yellow line, which I thought just meant don't pass. I didn't realize it means you should make left turns or U-turns.

Fortunately I made it through with just written warning, but now I'm left wondering if is it possible to drive in Boston by following the driving laws instead of the driving customs. Perhaps the world will never know.

Lost in Dublin

Ireland - Day 1
My vacation began with a rocky start. As I groggily walked off the plane at 5:30 AM, I was abruptly brought to my senses by the passport guy barking at me because I hadn't filled out a lodging card on the plane.

Then I got my car. If they had secretly filmed me I could have been a wonderful car commercial. Imagine an Irish accented voice saying, "To prove how durable our vehicles are we gave one to an untraveled, directionally-challenged American girl functioning on only two hours of sleep and let her loose in Dublin to find her hotel. Let's see how the car fared."

First, a bicyclist ran into the door. "No harm done," he said. "Just a bit of rubber from the handlebars on the door."

Second, I clipped a taxi cab with my passenger side mirror. The taxi driver came up. "No harm done. You just hit the mirror," he said flipping the mirror back into place.

Third, I clipped a bus with the same mirror. This time the mirror flipped in and the actual mirror popped out.

Fourth, I couldn't find my hotel thanks to one-way roads, hidden street signs, and my lack of maps. I did however see all of the greater Dublin area at least 4 or 5 times.

Fifth, I couldn't find reverse. Who would have thought that you had to do something other than put it into gear?

After 8 hours of driving around Dublin, I pulled into my hotel, parked my car and began checking out the city. My time was limited due to my keystone cop driving adventures, but I at least had a chance to realize that Dublin isn't such a bad city provided you aren't in a car.