Driving in Morocco is like being in a war zone. Imagine being dropped in the middle of a mine field and trying to navigate your way through it without getting yourself killed. That is what driving in Morocco is like. Now, not saying that every Moroccan is a bad driver, in fact most are probably very good drivers. It is just the respect for the rules of the road do not exist in Morocco. This is the major issue at hand in Morocco.

            There have been many incidents where I thought there was surely going to be an accident and that the police would be needed to be called in order to resolve what had happened. People seem to just go. Just drive without any thinking in to the future moments of what could happen. The what-if. People tend to rush and just focus on the fact that they are late, the fact that they have a meeting in five minutes ten minutes away. Instead of just learning to accept the fact that it is what it is and 99 percent of the time there is nothing you would be able to do in order to change it. But we still let this control us in life. And I think this is the case of what is happening in Morocco.

There is a tendency in Morocco and among Moroccan people of being notoriously late for everything that is scheduled for anytime of the day, no matter what it is. This is also known as Moroccan time. And this phenomenon is what also does not help the fact that there are so many hectic drivers on the road. With everyone who is running late, no wonder there are so many people that are driving this chaotically on order to get to where they need to be on time.

Now, with saying this, I am most definitely not saying that there is no insane drivers in the United States. But in the United States these crazy driver are an anomaly, and not necessarily the normal thing that is happening daily.

The rules of the road also seem to be more enforced int the United States than here in Morocco. I know for example there many laws that are in place that prevent many of the actions that happen here in Morocco. Parking on the sidewalk was something that had me caught off guard the first couple of weeks that I was in Morocco. I was imagining the amount of trouble that someone would get in to if they went to the sidewalk in Worcester, Massachusetts for example and just decided “oh there are no parking spaces available, but hey look, the sidewalk is free! How convenient!” That would most definitely not fly in the United States, as the police would be in there in a matter of seconds to come and arrest you for reckless driving and then the endangerment of the pedestrians on the sidewalk by parking on it. Something similar is with the double parking on the street. You find a good amount of people double parking, which is also illegal in the United States. There is no such thing as double parking in the United States. If you are caught double parking on the main road in the United States, you will end up with a ticket from the traffic police. But the police here seem to about this and you not trying to be a problem as they are driving around the city doing their daily patrols. Even though there is a strong police presence here in Morocco, it almost seems as if there is not any attention to the minor but yet major also details of the driving in Morocco.

Honestly, it feels like they, being the Moroccan police, entice this chaotic driving in society. Now, the reason for this in unbeknownst to me, but it could be one thing for me. The first guess would be that they realize that they can not stop Moroccan people from driving the way that they have been driving the past forever, so they just choose to encourage just to make it one less obstacle that they must deal with. This is what I have been caught off guard by, when I see police officers in traffic waving, whistling, and yelling at the cars in front of them to go faster, for no apparent reason whatsoever.

Essentially, the driving and infrastructure of the roads in Morocco caught me off guard heavily. I knew that driving in Morocco was considered hectic, but I did not know it was to this degree. I have now learned that if I choose to drive in Morocco, I must be ready to face the upcoming war that comes pre-packaged with driving on Morocco.

 

 

 All of these pictures above are rare occasions of what Morocco roads do not look like mostly.