Rules of the Road

Our recent trip to Cape Coast reminded us that the rules of road are slightly different here. Let me give you a few examples.

First of all what I at first thot was the highway number turned out to be the speed limit sign. You can understand my not knowing it was the speed limit since it had absolutely nothing to do with our speed for most of the trip. Only at one point when I began to wonder if we were having car trouble or something did we actually go the speed limit. And its a good thing too because we soon came upon a speed trap. Who would have thot that Ghana would have speed traps?!? So just for the record they measure speed in km/hr here and we made most of the trip at around 100-120, while the speed limit was 50 or 80.

About those solid white lines that in the US mean "don't cross me", they apparently don't really mean that here. As far as I can tell from examples of driving here, they only provide a means for using up white paint.

I normally think of honking as a way to award a demerit to another driver, and while it may be used that way here. It usually means either "hey, a big fast car is coming, get off the road, stupid" or else "go faster, we have been following you forever". By the way, it seems cars have the right-of-way here and pedestrians just have to fend for themselves.

At one point we heard sirens and I wondered if it was an emergency vehicle, but it turned out to be the Bank of Ghana with an armed escort. They were travelling faster than we were right down the middle of the road. They were given the right of way.

While we saw many things that were similar to the US, we did see one thing that was uniquely Ghanaian--speed bumps. I assume they are intended to help enforce the speed limit but I did not notice that they did that. They are fairly low but come in two groups of five. One set will be very narrow similar to typical US speed bumps, but close together and shorter. The second set will be slightly further apart and much wider. Of course which sets comes first and which is second depends on which direction you are traveling so apparently there isn't a specific rule about which part you meet first. Oh, and if a community feels the speed is too high on a piece of "their" road they will create speed bumps by piling a row of dirt across the road. These can be very steep and are definitely worth slowing for.

If anyone is interested I understand it is much easier to get a Ghanaian license if you have a US license already.