The “official”population of Cairo residents is about 10 Million people, add up daily commuters from Giza and other nearby cities, and you get a little more than a 17 million headcount (on the most conservative basis). To say that traffic in Cairo is a mess would be a grave understatement, a more accurate description of the current state of affairs in Cairo streets is FUBAR.

As a hypothetical scientific experiment, imagine for a second a peaceful, calm and rational person who doesn’t drive (or doesn’t drive in Cairo). Now, take said person and put him behind the wheel of anything with four wheels, and set him loose in Cairo streets for, say, 2 full weeks. In that short period of time, you’ll find that this person has turned into a brutal, violent and fiercely competitive fiend who bears no resemblance to his character prior to driving (in Cairo)! A more interesting observation is that this person would display signs of schizophrenia/split personality, switching between his initial self and his heinous transformation depending on whether he’s inside/outside the vehicle.

Even pedestrians have developed a weird, sometimes scary, kind of traffic “tolerance”. They rarely heed the deafening horns of incoming vehicles, and seem to have shifted the burden of their own safety to motorists. It’s like, they always know that the car speeding towards them @ 120 kph is indeed going to somehow dodge them in just the right moment, they don’t even blink at the screeching tires and go on with their conversation as if nothing happened. Living in Cairo needs an essential survival skill: crossing the street, any street. You can easily spot a non-Cairene by the way they do it: nervous, one step forward, two steps back, eyes darting between their destination (the other side of the road) and the unrelenting incoming traffic, etc. But fear not, a couple of weeks in Cairo, and you’ll acquire the steel-nerved skills and agility of a seasoned Cairo street-crosser. A tip for the newbies: find a local and shadow him (for added safety, you’ll need two on both flanks on a two-way street, or any street for that matter)

Traffic lights and road markings are for strictly decorative purposes. A social scientist might have an excellent environment in which to study “group behavior” in a major intersection in Cairo. Since we’ve already established the general non-acknowledgement of any traffic-control mechanisms, and the non-existence of common courtesy behind the wheel, the only way to ?beat” the traffic flood at the intersection is for drivers to gradually pressure the “enemy”. A couple of intimidating advances by the leading vehicles, a taunting horn here and a flashing headlight there, and you own the road. The other side then takes turn as the attacker. It’s the survival of the baddest, meanest and rudest drivers.

Add to this mess horse and donkey carts who go 10 kph in a one-lane road and don’t give a flying #@%& about the drivers going berserk in the long line of cars behind them. Then you have the notorious “microbuses”, switching lanes as if the road is their own crazy Grand Prix racing circuit, and stopping randomly for a pick up where ever they darn please. Public transportation buses, ironically painted green, with exhaust pipes spewing fumes with fine a disregard to all environmental regulations. Road rage is a national sport. There is a saying that goes: don’t get mad, get even…in Cairo, you get mad and you get even! It is the ultimate test of “urban” survival. Some would say that if you can drive in Cairo, you can drive anywhere in the world. I, however, would say that if you can drive in Cairo, you should be banned from driving anywhere in the world!

In the end, its all part of Cairo’s charm, isn’t it?!