If you take whatever you learned in drivers ed in high school, any expectations about right-of-way, or meaning from stop lights and stop signs, and throw it out the window, you will start to understand how traffic flows in Thailand and Cambodia.
Intersections without a concept of right-of-way take on new excitement when everyone just goes at the same time. The motorbikes weave in and out of car and truck and tuk-tuk traffic creating their own separate stream. Motorbikes outnumber most other vehicles, yet, they might have the most passengers at one time: we’ve seen up to 4 on a single bike.
Sometimes, you might discover that you turned the wrong way on a road. In this case, we’ve seen the driver simply turn their vehicle around and drive in the other direction on the same side of the road. Other traffic will move aside for you.
The crazy driving is not limited to cities. Traveling between cities and provinces, the rule of the road seems to be drive as fast as you possibly can while honking your horn at everything you pass to get to your next destination.
I think the reason this traffic pattern “works” has a lot to do with the general laid-back way of life here in Southeast Asia. It definitely feels like folks trust others to pay attention while they do what they need to do. While I am 100% certain driving without rules would never work in the United States, I do think we could probably learn a little about paying attention to others and trusting that they are doing what they need to do.
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