Why don’t we do it in the road…in Romania

By Corina Maritescu

 

I had heard a rumor that Romanian licenses and exams could be bought, but the thought of thousands of people who didn’t have the first idea about driving roaming the streets in killing machines at 60km/h (37 mph) scared me just a little bit. I looked for an explanation of the process and the consequences. My friend Alex who, despite being an excellent driver, had paid a bribe for his driver’s license a year before, became my source of reference.

“Every driving examiner has a quota he has to meet at each exam. Let’s say, out of 10 people, he has to fail five,” Alex explained. “Out of the five he passes, four have paid for their license, so they’re guaranteed a spot. So the other six are all really battling for the one spot left. If you’re a good driver, the instructor will think ‘you’ll pass the next time,’ and fail you so he can meet his quota. So, you have to buy your exam. It’s the only way. And then…you learn how to drive after you’ve gotten your license.”

Of course, driving in a sea of bumping cars driven by high-paying 18-year-olds would be another story all together.

I couldn’t imagine bribing the police, getting my license, and then going out into traffic knowing that I did not know how to drive. My good friend Anca had a solution for this predicament.

“You just have to relax, you know. Just go with the flow of traffic. That’s how I do it. That’s how I got my license.”

“Oh, so you didn’t buy it?” I asked her enthusiastically.

“Oh, oh yeah, of course I did. But it helped that I relaxed, too, you know.”

This thought was terrifying. The process of buying your license, even more so. To guarantee your spot in that top five, all you had to do was to talk to your instructor and ask for a “hook-up,” or, as the Romanians would say, “o combinatie.” Then the instructor would pull some strings and name you a price, usually in the 250-350 euro ($330-$460) range. You gave the money to the instructor and they took care of everything.

A good deal for your pockets and your conscience, considering you were making a life-time investment. I shuddered at the idea that my Romanian driving teacher, fair and easygoing Andrei, could be engaged in such illegal and dangerous activities. I asked him in a roundabout manner, during our next session, if he’s ever fixed up an exam.

“That’s a complicated issue,” he answered. “Sometimes I have helped people fix up their exams. You have to work within the system. Sometimes, they’ll fail you even if you don’t deserve to fail. I would never fix up an exam for someone who I didn’t know was an excellent driver. A lot of idiots ask me to fix them up, and I tell them I don’t know anyone at the police. ”

Not everyone exercises the same type of strict (albeit subjective) judgment. Indeed, in June 2008, almost a year after my conversation with Andrei, a scandal broke out in Arges, one of Romania’s administrative districts. A web of “driver license mafia” was discovered here, examiners who effectively coordinated to give licenses to anyone who could afford them, regardless of their knowledge.

According to the periodical Gandul, 22 officers were detained by the police with regards to this investigation, and over a million euro and 20 bags of documents were found stashed away in their various residences. This investigation is still going on today, having been extended to Bucharest and other parts of Romania.

Well, my mother always told me to do things fairly and independently, so I decided against buying my license.

Though I failed it the first time around, in August 2007, I can’t say it was the system that got me down. There were some complications with the clutch and the stick shift, and my brain-foot coordination, exacerbated by unclear instructions, my innate anxiety around exams, and pedestrians (rudely) jumping out from what seemed like a bush. Trying to drive a manual car uphill under the pressure of an exam I felt almost sure I would fail. To make a long story short, I got nervous and pressed the gas pedal a little too insistently, and flew into an intersection like a car out of a MacGyver episode.

The tester was right not to give me my license. If there had been traffic in the intersection at the top of the hill, I could very easily have injured someone. He apologized for not giving me the license, and I went with no resistance, almost thanking him for exercising such good judgment. Since my file had no mention of this, he never found out that I studied in the U.S, and he never knew that I would have to wait another 6 months to take the test again.

Hold your breath…

My anxiety had somehow traveled to my left leg, and my calf would not stop shaking. I could only move my body with quick jerks and short muscle spasms.

This was a bad thing, considering I was behind the wheel and driving a manual car requires fine handling of the clutch and precise shifting of gears.

It was the 16th of January 2008, and I was taking the road test portion of my driving exam for the second time. The capital city of Bucharest, Romania, sat quiet and still for me for the first time since I had started driving on its streets. In the aftermath of the winter holidays, most people were still on vacation, or rendered bed-ridden by one of the dozens of feasts they had partaken in.

“Don’t panic, breathe…don’t panic, breathe…” I muttered to myself, as a fully uniformed policeman sat in the passenger seat of the car, scoffing audibly and jotting down notes on his clipboard, a look of disgust pasted on his face.

I could feel the dreaded moment coming on, the moment when I would let go of the clutch too quickly and stall my engine in the middle of the intersection. Likely this would occur while a tram made its way towards the rear end of my car.

My negative thoughts had settled like a dark cloud around my judgment, and I decided that the simplest way to avoid engine-stalling embarrassment was to simply not shift any gears, if I could help it.

So I took all the turns in third gear, constantly driving at about 40 km/hour, double the recommended turning speed.

American immobility is a disability

Having grown up in the center of Bucharest, with its mostly reliable public transportation system, driving had always been a thought I was never going to have to learn. I liked walking, and for long distances I enjoyed taking the train.

But when I turned 17, I moved with my mother and sister to Cherry Hill, a New Jersey suburb outside of Philadelphia. It was here that I became acutely aware of my immobility. The school bus was about the extent of public transportation.

Having to ask for rides everywhere got annoying, and I decided I would learn how to drive. Doing this in New Jersey proved problematic. The state required a 6-month permit period, during which you could only learn to drive with your parents, since they were the only ones allowed in the car with you. But my mom drove a company car, and I was not allowed to get behind its wheel.

Professional driving instruction cost about $300 for six hours, when 15 one-and-a-half hour sessions in Romania cost about $70. Even after you had learned to drive in New Jersey, there followed a year-long provisional license with restrictions (such as a 12 a.m. curfew, driving with one other person only, and not being able to cross state borders). I would have to learn on an automatic, which, as my family always says, “is not really driving.”

A combination of money-saving strategies and my mother’s time-saving managerial style convinced me that the best idea would be to go to driving school in Romania the following summer.

“Besides, look at it this way. Learn to drive in that madhouse in Romania, and you’ll be able to get around everywhere,” my mom said.

Indeed, the first thing Andrei told me right after showing me how to turn a key in the ignition was “you have to watch the road at all times. If you are about to cross an intersection with a one-way street, look both ways. You never know what these madmen are up to.”

Even internationally, Romanian drivers have gotten a reputation as crazy and dangerous, owing to their recklessness and a general disregard for the rules. In 2008, for example, there were 10,000 accidents recorded by the police, leaving 3,000 dead and 9,000 injured, according to the Romanian press website ziare.com. The same year, France, with a population more than three times that of Romania, had 400 dead and 6,000 injured.

The main causes for this alarming number of accidents in Romania, according to the same article, were speeding, inexperience, and poor road infrastructure. Yet, this same reckless driving is a kind of national pride for some. In fact, the only joke I have ever managed to remember out of all the jokes my dad used to tell me while I was growing up was about a taxi driver:

A guy gets into a cab and gives the driver his address. After the driver starts the car, he proceeds to run every red light he comes to. “What are you doing?” the customer asks. “Don’t worry,” the driver replies. “I’m a professional.” At the next intersection, the driver spots a green light and promptly comes to a halt. “Why are you stopping for the green light?” asks the customer. “Think about it, what if we bump into some other professional in the intersection?”

This unapologetically aggressive driving style has permeated the teaching process itself, and I learned all about it from Andrei.

“The rules don’t mean anything to anybody anymore. If I could leave the country like you did, I’d probably think about it pretty seriously. Take Prigoana for example,” he said, referring to the son of one of the richest men in Romania, “you’re not allowed to have two national driver’s licenses in this country. Does he care? He gets his license taken away one day for speeding in his Porsche or Lamborghini or whatever that is, he’s back to driving with his European license the next day. Here, money gets you everything.”

Including, as it turns out, a driver’s license.

The big day

During my Romanian road test in 2008, all of my mistakes were outweighed by my non-mistakes.

I know this because the policemen gave me my license, after chastising me for my turning disabilities for upwards of two minutes.

I had beat the system, and now I had a pink laminated 2″x3” card with my picture on it to prove it. My anxiety went away for a good few months, and only came back when I had to actually get behind the wheel in Romania again. Though New Jersey drivers are not the best, with their passion for tailgating and running yellow lights, there really is nothing like driving in Bucharest.

Used to cutting corners to shorten their commute to work, drivers drive on the sidewalks, cut through parking lots and backstreets and cut in front of one another, forsaking common courtesy. The more violent ones drive on the opposite side of the road, passing long, still lines of vehicles and crossing over tram lines and even pedestrian squares.

For all its inherent dangers, driving in Bucharest can be fun when I’m not in any hurry. And getting my license there has definitely had its perks. In February 2008, I presented this card to the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Authority, took a short computerized test (where you could skip over the questions you didn’t know the answer to!) and received a second driver’s license. If the police pull me over driving my Porsche or Lamborghini or whatever car that is, most likely my dad’s Mitsubishi Space car, I can be back on the road the next day with my American license.

 

 

Related Links:

Get an International Driver’s License

Romanian Driving Statistics

 

 

 

 

 

 

Corina Maritescu is a third-year student at New York University studying journalism and gender and sexuaulity studies. She is from Bucharest, Romania.