Costa Rica News – For any of us that have experienced driving on the roads of Costa Rica; it is a true adventure. Drivers will stop in the dead center of the road if they see a friend or neighbor. Drivers will honk at about every single woman walking down the street as well as stick their heads out the window for a cat call.
You can be the most defensive drier in the world but there is a huge chance that you will at some point while living in Costa Rica be involved in an accident.
One of the biggest reasons for this is the lack of drivers education and legitimate driving tests to ensure that drivers have all the knowledge and skills needed to traverse the roads in Costa Rica. You will need to slalom pot holds, dodge soccer balls, avoid motorcycles weaving in and out of traffic and try not to get hit by falling lamp posts…….Wait what?
In the first 9 months of this year drivers in Costa Rica have knocked down 201 lamp posts. This is close to one each and every day.
When the lamp posts are knocked down it causes traffic lights not to work and blackouts in the neighborhoods that they are in while CNFL tries to assess and fix the damage.
On Monday and Tuesday of this week, the CNFL had four poles knocked down because of accidents which affected Alajuelita, Guadalupe and Tibás.
These damages cost between about $10,000 and $50,000 to fix each time this occurs. If we take an low average of $25,000 per lamppost knocked down that means in just this year there have been over $5,000,000 is damages from this alone for the CNFL.
It is is time to require driver’s education in Costa Rica. There are too many bad drivers as well as too many deaths caused by back of knowledge and skills to drive in Costa Rica.
Yes I am sure that there would be back end payoffs and people that would cheat the system, that is a part of life in Costa Rica, but the ones that did go through the course would make the roads of Costa Rica safer.
This requirement in getting a drivers license in Costa Rica as well as cops actually enforcing moving violations would in the long run save Costa Rica money on hospital bills being paid by the CCSS as well as decreasing damage being caused to lampposts and other infrastructure.
Mrs, Chinchilla your image is going to always remain bad, how about putting the $200,000 you want to spend on “improving your image” on this.
