Improving the transit in BA

[Amargo]

There have been millions of threads complaining about the traffic in BA and how bad we drive (among other million subjects, like BA making you losing hair, BA being the cause for disease, impotence, leprosy, etc).

Here seems to be a way to help improve manners on the road.
We should expext an 'e-mail rain' coming from foreigners living in BA.

 

[fred mertz]

Probably the best way to control speeders would be to install speed bumps. There is one as you exit Ezeiza and I think another on a street off Cordoba (3000-3500?). Mexico City has many. They even have them on highways. It would annoy drivers immensely, but would save lives. Two women were killed by speeding buses on Friday the 13th. Don't say that because it was Friday the 13th, they were unlucky.

 

[darmanad]

Email complaints about parking don't affect speeders and reckless drivers. I didnt try to comprehend the entire article but doesnt it report on denuncios (= tickets?) received by email. How will that affect the more serious problems of bad driving?

 

[esllou]

I've always been amazed at how vociferous the complaints are from expats concerning driving in BA. I lived in italy for ten years and believe me, the driving here is positively Scandinavian in its elegance, skill and patience compared to there.

when traffic lights turn red here in BA...drivers actually stop. In italy, it's merely a sign to begin thinking about stopping. Drivers do not sit on their horns in anything like the same manner. Double and even triple parking are the norm in italy in a way that is never true here in BA. And on and on. There is a selfishness and, dare I say, wilful self-destructive trait in italian drivers that I've just never seen here.

I do realise that puts me in a minority of one on the subject.

 

[Eternalnewbie]

I've always been amazed at how vociferous the complaints are from expats concerning driving in BA. I lived in italy for ten years and believe me, the driving here is positively Scandinavian in its elegance, skill and patience compared to there.

when traffic lights turn red here in BA...drivers actually stop. In italy, it's merely a sign to begin thinking about stopping. Drivers do not sit on their horns in anything like the same manner. Double and even triple parking are the norm in italy in a way that is never true here in BA. And on and on. There is a selfishness and, dare I say, wilful self-destructive trait in italian drivers that I've just never seen here.

I do realise that puts me in a minority of one on the subject.

That might be the old Italy, or at least the old Rome. I was recently in Rome for two weeks, and was amazed at how the traffic had changed. Cars even stopped at marked crosswalks for pedestrians even without a light. I asked the Roman woman from whom I had rented an apartment about this freaky thing with cars stopping anytime a pedestrian ventured near the street, and she told me the laws had recently changed -- and were being strictly enforced -- and they were Draconian. If I remember correctly, the fine for not stopping when a pedestrian is in a marked crosswalk is 1000 Euros; second offense, one year suspension of drivers license; third offense, confiscation of the automobile. If a pedestrian is struck in a marked crosswalk, but not killed -- which is something else altogether, drivers license suspended for ten years and a 25,000 Euro fine.

I could stroll leisurely across any street in the center of Rome (at a marked crosswalk, with or without a signal light), and everybody stopped and waited for me as if I were the bloody Pope.

Maybe that's the old Italy.

Try that in Buenos Aires and you are stone cold dead, and the driver might get a brief lecture from one of the sleepy cops hanging out here and there.

 

[starlucia]

I'd love to see red-light cameras at dangerous intersections (especially over by Alem and Madero, where Mack trucks blow through red lights long after the color has changed.) In the U.S., red-light violations carry fines of up to $450 -- I imagine that if I received a whopping ticket like that in the mail, I would never, ever try to beat a red light again.