where’s my exosuit when i need it?

I love living in Malaysia, but I can not understand how people drive here.

I mean that two ways: a) I can’t understand how they actually physically perform the batsh*t loony toons insane manoeuvers they squeal and wrench and swerve their Proton POSes into, and b) I can’t comprehend how human beings can agree as a society that this is how motor vehicles should be driven.

I will say up front that we often ride in taxis, and taxi drivers in any country usually have whimsical little ways of making the drive fun for themselves, usually by treating the gas and brake like kick drum pedals, but this goes beyond the norm and a lot of this applies to our experience driving in normal peoples’ cars, too. This is an eleven-point breakdown of how our typical Malaysian road experience will go:

1. We stand on the side of the road for about a minute waiting for a taxi, choking and gasping in the noxious fumes as an endless convoy of cement trucks and work vans and other behemoths go rumbling thunderously by at about one mile an hour. I’m exaggerating the number of cement trucks – occasionally there will be a car, a motorcycle or a fat European in an SUV.

2. One of us makes an infinitesimal waving gesture towards a taxi hundreds of yards away, which a split second later swerves wildly to the side of the road and waits for us, causing everyone else on both sides of the street to have to swerve around him.

3. We dash across the street to the taxi, narrowly escaping being flattened by the caravan of roaring cement trucks.

4. The second we close the door the taxi driver swerves violently back into traffic, does a screeching u-turn with his eyes shut tight and speeds off, cutting off anyone who might have happened to be going in either direction during this process, and somehow narrowly avoiding the five other taxis who are doing the same thing at the same time.

5. We tear ass along the highway at speeds only limited by the facts that the car is a hunk of junk and that every single other motorist in front of us is trying to occupy at least two lanes via aggressive swerving and weaving tactics.

6. Our taxi driver attempts to counter this by swerving even more wildly, driving in between other cars, running motorcyclists off the shoulder, and riding people’s bumpers.

7. We almost die in horrible accidents about six to eight times, each time missing death by mere inches. At no point does anyone involved look in any of their mirrors or turn their head in any direction at all. Ever.

8. I begin to get nauseous. The keening Indian music on the radio, which seemed cute when we got in the taxi, now seems like the earsplitting death throes of a legion of demonic banshees. I pray for a swift death.

9. For a brief, surreal moment, the swerving stops and all is utterly still as the taxi driver hands over some toll money. Then we’re off and swerving again.

10. We almost die a further three to five times.

11. We reach our destination, toss some money at the cab driver, and stagger unsteadily out into the sane world, shocked to have survived the Auto Apocalypse once again.

The Malaysian government is apparently aware of the problem and are working on it through psy-ops because we are subjected to horrifying, maudlin TV commercials which are of the same genre as the old driver’s ed. standbys such as “Blood on the Dashboard”. There is even some sort of government website where you’re encouraged to post pictures of offensive drivers or something. I will leave you with this quote from one of that site’s forums, which I think puts the Malaysian pedestrian’s suicidal dilemma nicely and also, I think, captures some of the adorable, quirky style of Malaysian English:

It is sad to say Malaysian motorists will never respect pedestrian and zebra crossing. Try crossing them when pedestrian light is still blinking. The main culprits are the motorcyclists. They will zoom past you in every nooks and corner in a threatening manner as though as you are not existing, and continuously honking at you. Say me bad or whatever without sympathetic heart...if they were knock down by other vehicles, they deserve it.

Vehicles are no better. They just stop right on top of the pedestrian/zebra crossing while waiting for the green light to turn.

When Malaysian drivers and motorcyclists will learn?

When, oh when indeed.