Once a week for the past three years I have been driving carpool an early morning carpool to my sons’ school in Bnei Brak. How early? Put it this way, rule number one of this exercise is that we have to be on the highway by 7:00 a.m. otherwise the traffic backs up to the point that you might as well stay home until 10:00a.m. because you could walk faster than the cars are moving. That’s how early.
Driving in Israel is a life experience that I could live without at the best of times, but out there on the highway – and later, in the tangled streets of Bnei Brak – you need nerves of driving steel.
If you have the good fortune to find yourself on the highway in non-rush hour traffic, you most likely will eventually witness the driving finesse that I can only attribute to fighter pilots or people with a death wish. The problem in Israel is that the country is full of people who have high-end military basic training. Not the run-of-the-mill stuff that the average soldier needs, but rather, the kind of training that takes months and months, if not a year, to complete. People die in this training – no, not often, but there are some who just don’t make it. And those who do eventually leave the army and get cars. And then, they decide to drive those cars on the highway at the same time that I am out there.
I have seen people cut into another lane without the slightest hint that there is either room to do so or that the driver they are cutting off is inclined to give way. I have seen people driving so fast in the pouring rain, that they spin out, then correct the spin and drive away. If that happened to me, I would pull over to the side, thank God, and call a cab.
So, having survived the craziness I often see on the highway, we usually manage to arrive at the Bnei Brak exit at about 7:10. Here, you meet the exact opposite problem. No one is moving because everyone is trying to move – into the exact same spot – at precisely the same second. In case it isn’t obvious ... this is physically impossible. However, this does not deter people from attempting the same move over and over again.
The key to moving forward under these maxi-grid-conditions is to continue to inch forward consistently. It also involves ignoring all the people yelling at you and trying to out-inch you. You need nerves of steel for this move.
And then when you finally get past this little impasse from hell, you are in Bnei Brak. For those of you who do not know much about Israel, let me tell you that BB is one of the poorest, most crowded cities in the country primarily because most men from BB don’t work. They send their pregnant wives out to work at low paying jobs while they spend their days avoiding their national army service and choosing, instead, to study Torah. As a result, they have no money. However, they have many children.
Many of these men are also responsible for getting their kids out the door to school in the morning, which explains why I almost kill a child at least once per trip. Apparently these fathers are not familiar with the “look-both-ways” concept of my youth. Actually, I still use it with my kids but it is not a common phenomenon in BB. Of course, most of the kids are out on the streets alone and without that looking both ways thing, are prone to running out into what is already the biggest jumble of traffic you can imagine.
I am no fan of the ultra orthodox who populate these neighbourhoods, but I am not interested in killing any of them – particularly the children. I don’t agree with their lifestyle choices but I am not a vigilante correction force of one. We have enough killers just outside our borders. I have no intention of reducing myself to their tactics.
Finally, there are the stupid bus drivers who bully their ways into spots they have no right to be. In Israeil traffic – and particularly in BB traffic – might does make right and the bus drivers live by this motto completely.
I really need room for a diagram here so I can show you how even if I have the right of way and the road is incredibly narrow with cars carelessly parked on either side, the oncoming bus will always lurch forward and position itself so that it is impossible to pass without taking all the paint off the drivers’ side of your car. (I know this from experience.) All they had to do to be decent people and good citizens was give you your God-given right-of-way for all of 10 seconds, and none of the fiascos that occur daily would exist. But nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. That is not the Israeli way.
The Israeli way means not allowing yourself to be a fryer. A fryer is a sucker. And being a sucker is the most anti-Israeli thing an Israeli can do. Eating pork on Yom Kippur is a weak second to being perceived as a sucker in Israel. Therefore, no self-respecting, Israeli-born bus driver is ever going to give way to a stupid CAR (heaven forbid). Of course, I doubt they would give way to a monster truck either. It’s just not in their collective character.
By the time I arrive back in my driveway, I am always amazed the I made it home in one piece. Other than a little shaking and a racing heart beat, I am usually ready to hit the road again for the next week’s carpool.
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