Czech Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself

In the second of a series of posts titled with terrible puns, I will discuss an issue that I have noticed ever since I first got to the Czech Republic. Perhaps Borat could tell it best:

(cue music to "Throw the Jew Down the Well")
In this country there is problem/ and that problem is transport
It is very very scary/ because Czech drivers are bad.

Seriously, the Czechs make American teenage girls look like Jeff Gordon in comparison and the only thing scarier than being in the path of a Czech driver is being in the car of one. In the minds of the Czechs, there is really no such thing as a "speed limit" or "lane line", despite physical evidence to their existence. I know that we've all done 45 on a 30 mph street back home, but most of those streets are straight and wide. I've been in cars going 80 kilometers an hour (about 60 mph) barrelling down tightly winding roads that Americans would consider to be barely wide enough for a Subaru. Yes, the cars here are smaller, but these roads are narrow even by European standards. Yet that doesn't stop these Czech drivers from gunning it, passing other drivers frighteningly close to blind corners going uphill. City drivers are no better. If you've been accustomed to jaywalking even the arterial streets of your college town, as I have, crossing streets in Prague will quickly teach you to look both ways again.

Even the professional drivers are bad. Being in a bus while the driver is flooring it all the way into and through a tight turn is kind of scary. These busses may be older than the freely elected government, but that doesn't mean they can't accelerate.

Once when we were going to the Pub for a few beers after work, I was moved from the shotgun seat because Teresa, who does not yet have her driver's license, needed to sit shotgun so she could learn how to drive a stickshift. Why? Becuase since she didn't have her license, the penalty wouldn't be as bad if she got caught driving us home with a blood alcohol limit above the legal limit (whatever that was). Fuke ended up not drinking that night until later ( I think this was the night I stayed out until 6 am), but I'm pretty sure they were serious about all that and not just joking.

You don't even have to see a moving vehicle to realize the Czechs are terrible with their cars, just look at any row of parked cars and eventually you will see one with anywhere from one to four wheels in the middle of a pedestrian walk way.
This is the tiled walkway up to the Astronomical Institute. One might be able to explain this as a temporary parking job for some guy who had to move something very heavy. But no, he was there all day, and I've often seen other cars parked here. Yesterday I saw a car in Prague that had managed to get three of it's wheels up on the sidewalk.

I suppose at some basic level this reflects the "Bohemian" attitude towards rules, which aren't really enforced by anyone (I hadn't seen a policeman in over a week until Tuesday - you can't go two blocks in New York without seeing one of their Finest. In another comparison with New York, the Metro here has no such thing as turnstiles. It basically works on an honor system where you get a stamp on your ticket and plainclothes officials randomly check to see that you have a valid pass or ticket. This is great for me, I haven't paid metro fare in a week, I just keep an unvalidated ticket in case I get checked, with the plan to play dumb tourist and say I didn't know it had to be validated. And at $5.00 round trip from Ondrejov to Prague this has been huge savings). Either that or after the oppression of Communism they're happy to be able to do whatever they want. I guess at least they all wear their seatbelts.