I can't believe I left this out when discussing Macho Road Culture last night.
To me, by far the most startling thing about road culture here in Buenos Aires is how aggressively the buses (colectivos) drive.
I was think about this yesterday as I was riding the bike all afternoon. What is it that makes these buses seem more threatening than buses in NYC? And I think the answer is this -- hard acceleration. Bus drivers here really stomp on the gas, they take off from every one of their frequent stops as fast as they can. I don't remember my basic physics all that well, but I'm pretty sure that you're using a great deal more force to accelerate than to just maintain a particular speed. And when you're accelerating a 10-ton bus, that takes a whole lot of force.
I think in NYC the buses are driven quite a bit more gently. Granted, the buses here are no doubt faster than the buses in Manhattan. Everything is a trade-off I suppose -- in this case efficient transportation v. threatening huge hulks of steel hurtling around all over the place. Of course you could say that about automobile transportation as well as bus transportation. But the thing of note here is that the threat level from these buses -- on just a basic, physical awareness level -- is frequently a lot higher than we foreigners are used to back home.
No surprise, I guess. Just part of the 'roughness' of the place that's part of it's appeal for us.
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