Roads - Regions - Articles about Israel

��

Be an Israeli. Think narrow.

It's your best way to understand Israeli roads.

Don't think of sprawling, wide traffic lanes. Be narrow-minded. Our country is narrow, and our roads are even more so.

We don't complain about having to hold our breath when two cars pass on an Israeli road. We just screech, scratch, and scrape the other cars alongside of us along the way. We might call it the Three Ss. (We save Shake, Rattle, and Roll for our frequent earthquakes).

Our houses are also narrow and small.

Our cities are small.

Our buses themselves are narrow. They're made by a local company after importing some of the parts so that they can make their way through some of the streets. But even so, the bus that goes through the Old City of Jerusalem has to be extra narrow because the streets are extra narrow. Did I say that the people don't complain? Perhaps that's not exactly the case. They don't complain about the narrow roads. They do complain about a lot of other things.

Some time ago, the Department of Public Works (it's called Maatz here) built a modern, wide road to my neighborhood. There were supposed to be two wide lanes in each direction. However, they neglected to paint in the lines.

The drivers were used to narrow lanes, so they assumed - and created - three lanes in each direction. Cars in the middle two lanes sped along in both directions. They played an interesting game of roulette, in which each car waited until the last possible moment before darting back to his side of the road.

And you thought wars were scary.

Where do you want to go now?