tunisia

Just got back from Tunisia, while I didn't drive I was on the road in coaches and 4x4s for a good 2000 km.

One thing I was amazed at was how good they are at overtaking. It must be because they get so much practise. The roads are mostly straight SC and are used by clapped out vans going 20mph and also mercedes, Land Cruisers and coaches doing 80mph+. They seemed to be able to judge the speeds and distances really well, a few times I was thinking "nope, i wouldn't have done that" when I saw a car coming the other way overtaking, but our driver just kept going and made no attempt to back off and they pbutted safely.

Only once did our driver even nearly screw up. We were in a big coach following a truck and a couple of cars overtaking this van. As the truck pulled back in after the overtake there was a small van approaching the other way. This certainly wasn't on the road as the truck pulled out to make the overtake, I think it must have pulled out from the verge while everyone was overtaking. Anyway, the coach driver just braked a bit and pulled back in.

It made me think, nearly 50% of the overtakes I saw that were perfectly safe would have caused all sorts of light flashing and hand waving here in the UK.

I noticed they don't use their mirrors though, but people behind just beep their horn when it might cause a problem. Eg if they were about to overtake someone who might also be pulling out to overtake the vehicle infront, they would beep just to make sure that the car didn't pull out. Also cars tend to drive down the middle of the roads (the edges are a bit rough sometimes) so when you're coming up behind you just beep to make the car move over. Beeping seems a lot more "friendly" than it is here.

Oh, and if you wanted cheap diesel, it was about 25p-gallon from roadside "unofficial" sellers. God knows what it actually was, but apparently a lot of trucks returning to Libya and Algeria would buy it...