“You know this new rule they have brought in,” said my friend T indignantly, “about the zebra crossings?”

“No,” I said curiously, expecting the worst. “What’s this now?”

“You have to stop now, if you see someone on one.”

I think about this for a while.

“I actually got stopped recently,” she continued on a rising note. “And the cop said it was a court offence. He was getting ready to write a kolé and all. I had to put on my best smile and call him officer. They like that I’ve heard, being called officer.”

“Oh.” I say, trying to keep up.

“Yes. So he let me off. Bloody nuisance though. Most people don’t stop at the crossings because those pedestrians can’t seem to make up their minds anyway. They just hover around the edge of the pavement and you’re never sure if they’re trying to cross or just stopped there by accident to have a chat.”

“Hmmm.”

“Then when they do decide to cross, they walk so slowly, you’re waiting forever.”

“That’s true.” I say feebly, although it’s not.

“And if there’s a traffic light, you’re even more delayed because everyone crosses on the green light and then you have to wait for the red light to change again. It’s too bad.”

I have no response to all of this because I am as guilty as every other Sri Lankan driver, of speeding through the zebra crossings ignoring the hopeful pedestrians crowded at the edge of the road, waiting for the road to clear ENTIRELY before they place a trembling foot on the yellow lines. (If anyone tells you they always stop at the crossings they’re lying). When pedestrians do screw up their courage to cross, they scurry across guiltily, the men looking scared and the women self-conscious because they know that every male driver on either side of the crossing is checking them out at leisure.

No one seems to know that it’s their RIGHT to cross at any speed and at any time they wish, (unless the lights are green) except for those few elderly gentlemen one sometimes sees doing a Heil Hitler arm action and glaring at the lunging drivers as they march across the road, which always seems to work.

As a feminist I always used to stop for women and not so much for men, on the principle that men have a better life experience in general and can jolly well wait, for once. Now it seems the rules are suddenly being enforced and I must stop for everyone, what cheek.

And I was as astonished as my friend T the other day when a policeman tapped on my window as I waited for the light to change and said sternly, “Do you know where you have stopped?”

I glanced wildly around me, panicking and couldn’t think what I had done wrong.
“You have stopped ON the zebra crossing,” he snapped, “How do you expect people to cross the road, with a ladder?”

To this sort of question one somehow has no answer so I waited for him to calm down and he eventually did. But I had never been chastised for stopping on the lines before, it was like the time they took my license for “Crossing from one lane to the other in a wrong manner.” Whatever that meant. It was around the New Year and I figured they were short of revenue.

In Sri Lanka one has to deal with numerous lovely driving situations where one has to perilously take one’s vehicle through four lanes of speeding traffic, each lane of which is fighting to get to a different lane before we all hit some three or four-way junction. (Reid Avenue upto Thunmulla Junction, Torrington upto Reid Avenue/ the entirety of Duplication Road and Galle Road…)

This is like some terrifying Death Race and leaves no time to consider little issues like signaling lane changes because you’re too busy trying to save your car from being sideswiped and yourself from getting killed in a multiple pileup. It is not for the fainthearted who will certainly end up taking the wrong turn, but then driving in Sri Lanka never is.

Road rules and their enforcement seem to change from day to day. One never knows where which rule applies and every day you find out about a new one that wasn’t in force the day before. It works though. I never ever stop on the zebra crossing at the traffic lights anymore. It makes the haphazard queue of drivers behind me completely crazy, but that’s ok. I know I’m getting at least one rule of road etiquette absolutely right. Until I meet another policeman that is, who will ask me why I’m not pulled up to the bumper of the car in front of me and can’t I see I’m wasting everybody’s time.

Road rules, man. You have to learn to trust the zebra.