Getting around town

Street art: the jeepney

Filipinos claim their traffic is the worst in the world, but there don’t appear to be more vehicles in the road than some Chicago streets at rush hour. It’s just more Darwinian. The way to get where you want to go is to surge into the flow and weave madly in, out, and around the other cars, busses, jeepneys, taxis, trucks, pedicabs and people, while steering carefully with the horn. Same rules for the 14 lane highway and the narrow city lanes. The result is frequently dead gridlock at intersections, where right of way is determined by sheer nerve. Yet you see few dents on the vehicles and few visible crashes. Somehow drivers move through traffic successfully keeping centimeters apart. Must be a special kinesthetic sense born of necessity.