SCOOTERS, SCOOTERS, SCOOTERS

Yesterday I told you about the hair raising bus adventures we have here.  Well buses are not the only troublesome vehicles on the road, indeed they are not even the most hazardous. Anyone that has spent any amount of time in Sangata will tell you, that there are scooters everywhere. 

Scooters have an ability to appear out of nowhere, they cut you off and dart in and out of traffic weaving through spaces that aren't really big enough to accommodate them.  Scooters drive down the wrong side of the road, hardly ever indicate and they are often laden with wives and children, chickens or large pieces of furniture.  These daredevil scooter riders either plod along while the driver has a nice little chat on his mobile phone or go so fast they end up screeching to a halt a hair's breadth away from you. Helmets appear to be a choice rather than a rule and if you named a driving offence there's no doubt most scooter drivers have committed it. The unpredictability of scooters and their riders is made all the worse by the fact that there are literally millions of them. In Indonesia a scooter is a far cheaper option than a car and in the heavily congested towns, a far more sensible option too.

When you queue at traffic lights you see that scooters definitely rule the roads in Sangata. Two-wheeled modes of transport do not queue up like cars, vans and trucks. Oh no, as they can fit through the gaps, they see it as their right to be able to squeeze themselves up to the front of the queue.
There they gather more scooters joining the group by the second, until everywhere you look there are scooters. As soon as the light turns green (and often just before) there is a rev of engines and off they speed, leaving the cars in their wake. There is no point in trying to move off before all the scooters have gone as you'll only end up knocking one over and, as you are a bule that means trouble.
 In fact if you're involved in an accident and the Indonesian driver is at fault, you'll still be in trouble. The feeling is that you're a foreigner in this country and if you weren't in the country the accident wouldn't have happened (that is a whole blog in itself). 

I don’t drive in town, so I never have to try to dodge scooters from every angle. Hubby is not so fortunate and often as we pull into our drive after a trip to market I see him relax his grip on the steering wheel, we have made it back from town unscathed by the demonic scooter riders for another week.