We all know about Darwin’s theories. The strongest survives, the species that can adapt the quickest survive and so on. It’s the same with traffic in Morocco. At first glance it seems that people can drive (I mean, they must, considering the driving culture over there) but it seems that there are no rules or other laws related to it. That’s the impression anyway.
Whenever you’re behind the wheel, you need to pay attention. In Morocco, you need to pay attention 3 times more. You can’t count on the right-hand rule, you can’t count on the pedestrian crossings or traffic lights. They have it all but at the same time, it wouldn’t make much difference if they didn’t have them.
If you want to cross the road, just cross the road, independent of hundreds of cars and mopeds coming from all directions. Do that with confidence but be sure to look all directions at the same time. The cars usually stop. When you see a moped, let it go before you as they usually cant’ stop that quickly...if they have breaks at all that is.
Be confident – if you’re hesitant and can’t decide what to do and you’re on the road then the drivers will start to use their horns. But if you do it like it’s normal, they stop and let you cross the road. If you’re just waiting on a pedestrian crossing then you’ll probably need to wait for a week before you can cross it. There might be just a few cars every now and then who’d actually stop to let you cross the road.
If you see a blind turn, if you’re a local, you usually use this spot on the road to pass the car before you.
In the desert during the night, all the trucks are glowing like Christmas trees. At least that’s what they look like in front. And the back side – well, the most light I counted on truck’s back end was 40. That is 15 lights in left, 15 on the right and 10 in the middle. Go figure why they are all needed.
Because of the local driving culture (or call it no culture)
Morocco is one of the leaders in driving deaths in the world. Not to talk about crashes. And due to this it costs a lot to rent a car in Morocco. Because of the high-payment insurance required it might cost you 80-100 EUR to rent a car for a day in Morocco. So if you’d like a car for a week it might be more worthwhile to buy a car instead. Just a thought.
