Driving and Parking

For those of you who were wondering, people drive on the right side of the street here. I'm not sure if I've mentioned that before. The streets and street signs look basically the same as ours, and most of the signs are in Korean and English.

The streets tend to be much wider, though, with more lanes. The other days I was walking along a four lane per side street and thinking how funny it is that Ulsan, with only 1.2 million people, has such massive streets like this, when Los Angeles, with 8 million people, never gets past two lanes, except for highways. Then it occurred to me that Ulsan is just doing what LA never did--preparing for expansion. There's hardly any major traffic here.

They seem to be big fans of rotaries here. I'm not too keen on that, since I often have to stand to ride the bus, and any place I go on the bus involves going around the nearby rotary. It's also hard to cross a rotary on foot. I have to cross two or three streets to get where I want, and the crosswalks are set back away from the center quite a bit, so there's a lot of zigzagging.

I think I did mention in one of my first entries that red lights are more of a guideline than a rule. It's pretty weird, especially in a big, rich city. People follow the rules at the major intersections well enough, but not at smaller ones. It's kind of silly.

Scooters don't have to follow the rules at all. They just buzz around doing pretty much whatever they want. I've been almost clipped and fully cut off by scooters tons of times. It's annoying. One time this guy on a scooter drove right up in front of me so close he almost hit my shoulder from behind, and I had to veer off a bit to avoid him, then he stopped right in front of me and I had to walk all the way around him. They don't even notice.

People in cars don't notice pedestrians, either. We don't have the right of way. I've been almost hit and cut off by cars a lot, too. The other day I was walking to work and had to cross the small, but busy, street by my house. There was a car just idling right in the middle of it, so I went to cross in front of it, since that was easier. But then the driver started to go forward and stopped right in my path. So I started to go the other way, and the driver turned around in his seat and started backing up, blocking me again. I looked at his passenger and gave her a "What the fuck?" look, but it didn't really help. I think the driver ended up stopping again and I just ducked past the rear of the car to get across.

I don't think he was doing it on purpose, nor does anyone else. I just think that Koreans are largely just ridiculously retarded drivers, either because they don't get taught or they get taught wrong. This explains a lot from my days in Koreatown.

Another really great thing they do here is get tired of waiting in the long line at the red light and just drive up the opposing side of the street, cut in front of the whole line, and take a right. Or go straight, whatever. Awesome.

Parking is a real thing of beauty. I think you can almost park wherever you want here. It doesn't matter if your car is blocking a driveway or another street. It also doesn't matter which way your car is faced. Whenever we drive with Min-gyu (I found out the correct spelling of his name), he parks the Kate LA (our school) van on whichever side of the street is easier, crossing double yellow lines to do so. No one notices. I've never seen a parking ticket on someone's car or a parking enforcement vehicle or worker. It's all pretty much whatever around here.