SUVs aren’t all bad

Yesterday I took a spur-of-the-moment trip to Luwero to work with some folks in the District Health Office on budget and workplans. There is a cadre of drivers on the project team to get us losers who don’t drive back and forth from the field, but when every single one of them is out on call, we have to resort to the special hire taxi.

Charles arrived to pick me up around 2:00pm. Luckily, that meant that there wasn’t much traffic coming out of Kampala. We got moving…and boy, did we get moving! I’ve learned that drivers here are pretty fearless, but it feels a little more comfortable when you are several feet off the ground barreling down on a car your own size, rather then tooling along at 100km/h in Charles’ little Toyota Corolla. The bumps and potholes feel bigger and deeper when you go over them in a small car. And it doesn’t help that the main road between Kampala and Luwero is the straightest road I have ever seen. This facilitates high speeds, of course.

It is generally taken for granted here that anyone on four wheels has the right-of-way over anyone else. So when a driver is careening down the road, they slow for almost nothing. They use their horns liberally too, and everyone else knows what to do when they hear a horn toot. They scatter frantically to as far off the side of the road as they can. This goes for people as well as bicycles and motorcycles. And it’s not like the driver slows down while this happens either.

As far as I could tell, there were three things that Charles slowed down for while we were moving. A goat, a truck full of Ankole-cattle that was moving slowly in front of us (but only because there was an on-coming car so he couldn’t fly past said truck), and the rumble strips in Wobulenzi-town. At least someone was aware that this road is commonly mistaken for a NASCAR track. The rumble strips are big enough that if you don’t slow down to about 5km/h, you will probably tear off your undercarriage as you go over them. And there are about a half dozen of them too on your way through the town. Clearly, though, most drivers haven’t figured out that the purpose of the rumble strips is to cause you to maintain a constant slow speed all the way through town. Drivers go over the rumble strip at a very slow speed, and then manage to cover the 15 meters or so in between them at a normal “out on the freeway” speed. It’s not comfortable either with lots of lurching back and forth.

I made it, even though my heart rate did speed up significantly a few times, I found myself gripping the door handle a bit, and at least twice, the thought crossed my mind to tell Charles “you will not get paid by the project unless I get home in one piece.”

Anyway, as much as we all hear (or submit others to) lectures on how bad SUVs are, I have to admit, there are certain situations where I just don’t care about their impact on the environment. Often, when you are in a developing country that has two rainy seasons resulting in lousy roads and no speed limits, I admit, the oil crisis, ozone depletion, and acid rain are really the last thing on my mind. I’m just really thinking about getting out of the car safely at home.