Keeping the Faith

One of the most immediately visible things one has to adjust to in St. Petersburg is traffic. Moving from Iowa City to any big city would require this adjustment, of course, but Piter is in a league of its own. First of all, this is a 18th/19th century city - at least downtown is - and the streets are simply not wide enough to accommodate the ever-increasing number of cars on the road. This, in turn, leads to traffic jams (or, as they're called in Russian, "corks." Cute, huh?). When the cars finally get moving again, they don't waste any time.

The hurry hurry hurry of traffic in Piter leads to two interesting scenarios: the heart-stopping experience of being in a car and the equally life-threatening task of crossing the street when on foot.

In 2005-06 I rode in a car all of three times the whole year, and two of those times was in a taxi (I'm not counting marshrutki (minibuses) or other forms of surface transportation). This time I've already managed to have two rides in private cars. Driving in Piter is fast: you accelerate quickly, you drive fast, you turn fast, you brake fast and, most important of all, at the last minute. Lane divisions are merely suggestions, and it often seems like four cars are driving abreast where there should only be room for two. Despite all this, accidents seem not to happen nearly as often as I'd expect. I find that the best way to remain calm is to simply remind myself that Petersburg drivers are all used to the flow of traffic in the city, and that they drive the way they do because that's always how they've done it, not because they have any less control over their vehicles than people in Iowa City.

More relevant to my daily life is my interaction as a soft, squishy, flesh-and-blood pedestrian with these wildly zooming plastic and metal boxes. In theory, pedestrians in Russia have the right-of-way; in practice, it's each man for himself. When you've got the green pedestrian light, you still need to watch out for turning cars, which may or may not be watching out for you. The most interesting pedestrian situation I've encountered here is along my route to and from school every day. At the end of Tuchkov Bridge on the Vasilievski Island side there is what one might call a pedestrian crossing. Once in my first days here, I approached this crossing on foot; the light was green in my direction, but there was a green right-turn arrow directing a steady stream of cars across my path. I waited patiently for the right-turn arrow to turn red. After a couple cycles of the light, I realized that the right-turn arrow is always lit, and there is almost always a constant flow of cars turning right. What's a pedestrian to do?

For the first few days, I would wait for a Russian pedestrian to make the first move. If it looked like they weren't about to get creamed, I'd quick step it after them. Safety in numbers (this tactic also works at pedestrian crossings without stoplights). However, I don't always have time to wait around for a Russian to be heading the same direction as me; probably with good reason there's not a lot of pedestrian traffic at this particular intersection. So what do I do now? I look directly at the driver of the quickly-turning car coming towards me and just step into the street. If it looks like s/he's slowing down even a little bit, I keep moving. You just have to remember that they don't actually want to hit you, and have faith that they won't.

The thing is that Russians drive like they do almost everything else in life: they respect assertiveness. If a pedestrian is assertive and steps confidently into the street, on the whole drivers will recognize that and yield. It's the same way with the bureaucracy here: the more assertive you are with clerks, the more likely you are to actually get what you need done. Any sign of a lack of confidence or knowledge of what you're doing is taken to mean that you don't really want whatever it is you're asking for (whether that's getting an internet hookup at home, towels at the banya, or crossing the street). There's a fantastic Russian saying about the law that illustrates this point: "That's forbidden, but if you really want to, then okay" (Нельзя, но если очень хочется, то можно). There's always a way around obstacles.

By the way, I recently saw a great PSA showing a little old lady trying to cross the street at a crosswalk with no stoplight, and none of the speeding cars slow down for her. So there is a campaign to increase public awareness of the need to slow down for those who physically can't be as assertive as I described above, although I'm not sure that it's made much difference so far.

And while I'm thinking about cars, I'd like to mention a small difference (one of many) I've noticed between Russian and American news broadcasts. When they show some kind of big car accident on the news in America, all you ever see are smashed up cars, broken glass, maybe an ambulance. It's all very clean. Galya and I were watching the news last night and there was a piece about really nasty accident on the highway between Piter and Moscow, in which a big semitruck completely obliterated this car. Here's what they showed: the car, which is essentially the ripped apart outline of what was once a car, and in front of the car, a body. Holy cow, they showed footage of the victims. Not something you'd see on American TV. To make it that much more wrenching, they also showed footage of the truck driver sitting in his cab with his head in his hands, clearly completely distraught over what had happened. Whew.