Being a driver in Vancouver

     From some time now, I've had the 'pleasure' of driving my car on the streets of Vancouver. Given my full-time-student status, the BC law allows me to drive with my Chilean driver's license. Since I haven't had enough time to prepare and go through the battery of tests required in these cases, I've decided to drive my car with my old driver's license. 

     I've been a driver for almost 14 years and let me tell you I had not seen such bad drivers as here in Vancouver. Although the ICBC website claims that Vancouver's licensing standards are among the highest around the world, I can't help thinking that most of drivers here got their license at some TV contest or in the closest 7-eleven. First off, it is amazing the lack of enforcement of transit laws here. It is very common to see drivers violating 10 laws in one minute and nobody seems to care. Second, the attitude of 85% of drivers is to drive offensively instead of defensively. I guess many of them think that they are the only ones using the road (well, to be honest most of people here think they are the only ones who matter and hence nobody else cares) and act according to this: turns are done dangerously without even looking at who is behind; crossings are done when you least expect them; yellow light? what's that! drivers here seem to think traffic lights have only two (and some times only one) color: green and red. I remember when I was learning how to drive that the first thing I was taught was that you should always drive defensively and always make eye contact before doing any manouver. In fact, you should never assume that the other driver knows what you are about to do. Based on my experience here, people appear to learn exactly the opposite! 

      Perhaps I am wrong, but if everyone were a little bit more cautious when driving, life on the road would more pleasent. In any case, it seems that the bottom line here is once again that old rule that says: who cares?! so long as you do something not affecting you in direct way, it's alright. After all, you are the only one who matters, aren't you? 

What did we learn?

And finally we got the other side of the story. According to a Canadian Law firm, all the incidents between the Chilean U20 Soccer team in Toronto were triggered by the Toronto's police and not by the Chilean players as the Police told the media some time ago.

I don't think is time to look for who was right and who was wrong. More than that, we should be looking at what we can learn from all this. First of all, it is clear (at least to me) that prejudices can do a lot of harm: to me it is still unclear the reason why Police acted as they did and whether Toronto's Police would have acted the same way with some other team (not a south american one like Chile). Was the Toronto's police reaction triggered by the fact that they thought Chileans are just 'problematic' guys? Nobody knows that for sure, but let me tell you it remains a lot of that in the air. From the other side, there still seems to me that Chileans should also recognize their responsibility in all this: after all, if they would have followed the instructions of not getting close to fans (although this is as questionable instruction), things could have been prevented, perhaps. It's true that in countries like Chile, this is the normal way to do these things, but the fact that these guys were not in Chile should have told them to be more careful...

In summary, what I've learned is that no matter how 'integrated' or 'global' we think we are, people will always look at anyone different, differently! It didn't matter that Chile and Canada has an economical agreement (and lot of political ties) that day in Toronto, what mattered was that Canadian and Chileans are not the same, period. We might look the same (or very close) but there are fundamental differences that respond to the fact that we see and live life in different ways. And to try to hide or simply ignore those differences is plainly wrong! So next time a Canadian is in the UK or EUA (which are the closest countries to Canada that I can think of), he should bear in mind he or she is not an American or an English fellow. It seems absurd to say this, but many times people seem to forget this simple fact. And so long as we forget it, problems start to appear. So, if you are the visitor, respect your host's house and if you are the host, respect your guests! and remember that a visitor is always a visitor regardless how at home he/she feels!