Driving Thursday July 8, 2010

Life in Sao Paulo is gaining some semblance of normality. We have routines, favourite shops, restaurants and entertainment and I have even started getting involved with local charities and organizations. Days have some sort of structure that leads one to believe that life is “normal” albeit in a foreign land.

But, there are some things that will always mean that we are “foreigners” here. Not least, because the minute anyone sees me let alone hears me mangling the Portuguese language, it is obvious that I am not Brazilian.

A lot of ex-pats here drive themselves. I take my hat off to them because I have absolutely no intention of getting a local driving license and attempting to do the same. This is said by someone who drove in the Philippines, in Istanbul and could give a Parisian a run for their money around the Arc De Triomphe. No, there is something about Sao Paulo traffic , road works and pot holes that leads me to believe it is best left to the professionals and those courageous or is it mad enough to drive themselves.

So, what I am about to tell you here is anecdotal, stories from people that I have met that have gone through the process themselves.

It seems that there are three ways to obtain a drivers license. The first is to actually go through the process, take the test and do it the hard way. The second is to pay someone to take the test for you and the third is just to pay for it.

It is, or so I am told, a common insult to shout out the window of a car to another driver “I see you paid someone to get your license”. The inference being that their driving is so bad that they couldn’t possibly have passed a test on their own account.

I also heard from a friend who’s eldest son is about to go through the process here, that for an “extra” fee, the written part of the test could be taken by someone else. My friend, who actually wants his son to learn to drive, was pretty appalled. It turns out that the government has introduced a system whereby before taking any part of the written test, you have to have your fingerprints taken and scanned into the machine. It seems that the cheats have devised a way of making gelatin fingerprints so that the machine can be duped into thinking that the legitimate person is taking the test.

But the best story I have heard so far involves getting points on one’s license. As in most countries, various offences carry a points system and too many points can disqualify a license. An admirable system you might think to get the bad drivers off the road. Well, someone I was talking to told me that when she arrived in Sao Paulo, she decided to take a defensive driving course to give her more confidence about driving here. She started talking to the other participants, one of whom was an elderly gentleman, who it turned out, had over 1000 points on his license and was attending the course as part of the system to rehabilitate bad drivers. It turns out that the son of this elderly man had a trucking business and every time any one of the drivers received anything in the way of points, they designated this elderly man as the recipient and so the points were added to the old man’s license. It turns out that this guy doesn’t even drive any more; he just keeps his license to collect points and keep them off the licenses of the truck drivers.

This, it seems, is absolutely legal! Another friend who has 4 children living in the UK has made them all take the Brazilian driving test and get local licenses for the same reason. Her children don’t live here, and chances are that they never will. But their licenses are very handy when either of the parents gets caught speeding and issued with a ticket.

But even some professional drivers have their limits. Next week, I am taking the children to Rio de Janeiro for the weekend and rather than fly up, I thought it would be good to take the coast road, which by all accounts is a beautiful, albeit long drive. We have been thinking about what to do when we get there, whether to send Marcelo back with the car and hire a local driver, or whether to keep Marcelo with us for the weekend.

The decision was rather made for us when Marcelo announced that he really didn’t want to drive in Rio. Sao Paulo, it seems is one thing, Rio is something completely different and even Marcelo has his limits.