Stopping Traffic

If Moscow is a city of 14 million people (give or take a few hundred thousand), then it's soon going to be a city of 7 million cars. Maybe it already is. It's hard to count them, there's so many. Traffic seems to be more and more crazy each day.

Drivers will do ANYTHING to avoid standing in traffic. This includes - but is not limited to - tailgating ambulances, buying flashing lights & sirens for their cars (note this finely detailed specimen), or taking any available space on the road, even if it's in oncoming traffic Sometimes the available space is NOT on the road, but on the sidewalk! Seriously - I was very nearly mowed down one morning on my way to school. I'd felt something brush my sleeve, and when I turned to look, I discovered that the "something" was a large SUV with tinted windows and a claim on my pedestrian pathway. Had I been just a few inches further to my left, I'd have become a very highly educated hood ornament.

You know you've lived in Moscow too long when you look both ways before crossing a sidewalk.

Not only has the driving situation become so maddening, the parking situation is even worse! People have been known to land their Ladas on sidewalks, over medians, and even in the small strips of grass we might call "lawn" in other parts of the world. You know that the parking problem has become ultra serious when you see cars parked on top of each other. You think I'm joking...check it out.