Do you notice anything spectacular in this picture?

a. The cars are actually stopped at the crosswalk.

b. The man is not in danger of being ran down by the cars.

c. There is a crosswalk display guiding pedestrians.

d. Nothing

e.  a, b, and c

If you chose “d.” my guess is that you are from an industrialized country. If your answer was “e.” then my guess is that you’re from a country in which toilet paper is still not flushable. I’m not sure exactly what is the correlation. But I have an opinion. It seems, that in places in which the wealth gap is devastatingly large, the pedestrian is in danger. As far my own personal experience here in Colombia I have seen that you seem to be faulted if you must use your feet for transportation. Back in Texas, people may look down on you and be quite annoyed that you are using the taxpayer’s perfectly good sidewalk. But they don’t necessarily believe it’s okay if you die doing so. The attitude seems to be that of people here with cars. From taxi driver to the rare prick in an SUV (rare as in SUV’s in Colombia, not as in pricks rarely drive an SUV, au contraire) they feel completely confident that if you are in the middle of the street you are attempting suicide and they are obliged to help you by running you down.

Here in Colombia you can be well into the middle of a street and if someone is turning, left or right, they will come right for you, and if you take one step forward or backwards it is certain death. I haven’t been able to find any information on injury by vehicles to pedestrians here, possibly because no one quite cares, but I hear daily anecdotes. As far as general driving it’s the 5th most dangerous country in the world. I can believe this as most people I’ve talked to can’t understand why they have no passing zones on the sides of mountains in two way traffic lanes. This  from people who think it’s perfectly safe to hang onto the roll bar and stand on the bumper of a jeep going 55 mph. My former roommate said he liked the fact that people here weren’t so hung up on ridiculous safety standards and just used common sense. ……uh huh.

People here are totally stoked and proud of their country. They get quite defensive if you say, not only negative things, but anything less than this is God’s land on Earth. This is fine, if they are content and truly believe it. But my personal opinion it’s a bit of an inferiority complex. Colombia has a bad rap, rightfully so, to some accounts. But in general is a safe (as long as you’re not planning on walking anywhere) place and has tons of things to explore and do if one would choose so, mountains, beaches, glaciers and all that jazz. But it seems to me that small tweaks in what would seem like driving etiquette/law might go  a long way in repairing the damaged image. Pedestrian right of way would seem to be a step in the right direction.