I Wouldn't Play Chicken

Movies totally glamorize the game of chicken and give it a false sense of safety. I’ve never seen a clip where the cars collide head on or the wreckage that follows. Jakarta traffic is pretty much a huge game of chicken where every vehicle—from large trucks and buses to economy cars and small motorbikes—participates. To add to the excitement of the game, other elements are added: overtaking any vehicle at anytime, pedestrians and street vendors with their carts. To announce their presence, there’s constant beeping of the horns and flashes of headlines, which can mean anything:

“I’m right on your bumper and I’m going around you!”

“You better get in your lane ‘cause I’m not slowing down or stopping!”

“I know you’re coming but I’m turning anyway!”

“There’s room for me to go around if you just move a little!”

“Why aren’t you turning/moving?!?”

It’s a wonder that people seem so calm despite all the stress of driving. I don’t think people in the US would be so calm and collected if a Grey Hound bus decided to do a U-turn in the middle of a busy intersection, or if someone decided to turn a two-way street into a one way because they just felt that they could go around everyone else.

On a normal day, the commute to school is 20-30 minutes. On a bad day? Over an hour or so. I’ve always commuted about an hour to work, so 20-30 is not bad at all especially since I’m not driving. Dennis, on the other hand, only had to go 10 minutes with hardly any traffic even with construction along the way.

It’s hard to describe the sheer volume of motorbikes and how no rules seem to apply to them. They weave in and out of traffic many times around other vehicles and each other—it’s really quite a sight. At first I thought of ants, but the comparison is not appropriate since ants are so orderly and follow each other is a single file line. Someone else compared them to cockroaches because of the way they scatter and claim every bit of empty space on the road.

Imagine having to stop behind a few vehicles at an intersection. Before long, motorbikes surround your vehicle and use the foot of space between the bumpers to cut to whichever side there is space or movement. They continue to go around your vehicle until there is no space for them to advance, and you sit there wondering how many children you can sandwich between two adults on one motorbike (for the record we’ve seen one standing in front of the driver, another two between the driver and the adult passenger who by the way was holding a baby—how they can maneuver around all sorts of traffic is beyond me).

There also must be an understood rule that whichever direction has more traffic gets to occupy one lane of the oncoming traffic. Of course it’s the motorbikes that utilize that extra lane. Going against traffic, the motorbikes remind me of the scene at the end of LOTR Two Towers where Gandalf leads the cavalry down that big hill. Wave after wave of motorbikes head towards your vehicle and you want to scream before they swallow you.

The craziest part is that people walk the way they drive—they cut in front of you and hardly ever walk in a straight line or in any predictable path. Dennis and I were discussing whether or not they’re just completely oblivious, don’t know any better or just don’t care. Perhaps someone nailed it on the head when he said, “They don’t care about anyone but themselves—when they’re on the road anyway.”