Jon Clarke (Publisher & Editor)AFTER being stuck behind countless crawlers or overtaken by mad speed fiends, a report has now confirmed the suspicion: Andalucia has Spain’s worst drivers.
Drivers in southern Spain lost more points on their licenses than any other region.
The worst province was Sevilla where 68,000 drivers lost points last year, followed by Cordoba and Jaen.
Of the 200,000 points lost in total, some 7000 were pulled over for drink driving or speeding.
However, Malaga registered a 36 per cent drop in road deaths, while Sevilla emerged once again as the most dangerous province with 71 fatalities.
This just doesn’t surprise me at all. I used to live in Malawi, a very poor country in central Africa, and the percentage of cars there with only one headlight working was far lower than here in Andalucia. I’ve even seen Guardia Civil vans with only one working headlight!
In the former Yugoslavia it was said that you drove with one foot in the grave and the other in jail.
I’ve read that in Rome on your driving test if you can drive round the block without killing anybody you pass.
The trouble could well be in the way in which driving lessons are given here in Spain. The Spanish form of teaching is theory, theory and more theory with a tiny bit of practice thrown in. After learning stacks of the Highway Code and first aid (most of which will never be used in the average driver’s life) the new driver is then allowed out on the streets with very little practical experience. New drivers here are not taught to be alert to possible accidents or to be aware of their surroundings (one of the reasons why the average Spanish driver doesn’t even notice someone trying to pull out from a parking spot into a line of stationary traffic). The field of vision is just in front of the car’s bonnet! My wife has taken a break from learning to drive as some of the mock exam questions are ridiculous: correct pressures of a lorry’s tires, which bleeding arteries need to be stopped if you see someone in an accident etc etc.
One thing to be grateful for though: at least we don’t have the same Road Rage as exists in the UK. A good thing really, as the use of the car horn is almost mandatory here!