運転や車などについて -- About driving, cars and roads

Perhaps because I grew up in Europe, but I realized my assumption was for most other countries to have manual cars and Americans being, once again, apart with their automatics (not that I can drive a stick-shift very well, just to be clear, but try finding a driving school that teaches manual [in the U.S.]...). Here, I have no car. It's my first year here, I don't technically really need it, it's expensive and I want to see how bad the winter gets before making that decision. As a result, I'm dependent on other people, which has ups and downs, as most things in life.

Then one day, it occurred to me that all their cars were automatics! At least, all the ones I've been riding in. (Edit 01/12/12: That's a lie, I'd been in one manual car.) That was somewhat surprising, and then I just brushed it off. Their driving test is a lot harder than in the U.S., not that that's a hard thing to do, the American driving test is like getting a new credit card. From what I knew beforehand, I assume the Japanese test is a lot like the French (try European) one, you actually have to do maneuvers. And so most people fail the first time, echoing again what my friends told me from France.

I had an interesting conversation with a friend about the driver's license here, and how there are two types: one for automatic and one for manual. It makes sense, really, because if you only have the automatic license you shouldn't be able to drive a manual, we've all seen a movie depicting what happens when people don't know how to clutch, whereas if you have the manual license you can easily drive both. Brilliant.

Now as for driving... there's a bit of everything, probably. The speed limits are quite slow, 40 or 50 usually (and that's km/h) but the cops don't move if you go 10, sometimes 15 over, which the majority of drivers do. What's scary instead is the size of the roads, the manner in which some people drive (usually way over the speed limit, but the speed isn't as distressing to me), and their state in the winter due to snow. Pictures to follow in my post about winter.

But regardless of what type of car you drive, or what country you drive in, I still can't stand tailgating (especially on icy roads!), or waiting too long to pass a car/truck and making it seem like the side of the car is going to be scraped off, among other things.

So if I ever get a car here, I'll be the one driving 10 km/h over the speed limit, but that's it. I'll get my foot off the gas when the light turns red, and I'll wait until it's green to start accelerating (I swear, everyone does that, but somehow when bus drivers do it, it's scarier!). I won't pass someone when we're uphill or hit the brakes on an icy road.

Though, I'll probably just continue judging people's driving because I'm still 60% sure I don't want to drive here. Would you?