Driving, Brussels

Advice given by the State Department to American tourists and just published in the Belgian press (La Libre Belgique 17/06/2011):

"Another problem "growing", especially in Brussels, is steeling in cars, stopped or parked. Hence the advice to drive a car, doors and windows closed to prevent a thief steals a bag carelessly left on a seat.
The State Department also notes that the Belgians lead "significantly faster than the limit" and warned American tourists that "feign ignorance" does not save them of PV. "

The US State Department adds, I suppose for those drivers having an accident:
"Otherwise, Belgium is "a highly developed and stable democracy with a modern economy", with an excellent health care system.
Small problem though: the medical staff in Wallonia is not speaking usually English, which is not the case in Flanders or Brussels."

Here I don't agree: Medical staff from francophone hospitals read and study scientific literature, mostly in English, as all doctors. Maybe they will have a problem to understand people who speak dialectal English.

Driving in Brussels is a fight.

People drive fast, faster than they are capable of. You can see that they drive so fast they don't have time to see what's happening.

Its no surprise that Belgium has one of the highest death rates per capita in traffic in the EU.

You will see people in accidents all the time. More or less every day if you are an active driver. Don't be surprised if people take enormous risks.

I have never seen anything like this. Its almost as if people want to have an accident. And it goes from everyone. If the bus driver notices you are trying to get through, he will go full throttle to try to kill you if possible.

I've seen so many people hit by cars, cars hitting each other, cars hit by trams and so on during a few years it will be enough for a life time.

People also park right on pedestrian crossings, making sight zero for other cars and extremely dangerous for pedestrians, police don't seem to remove these cars as they rightfully do in other countries.

Also beware of another behavior which I found is trademark of Belgium: When someone has parked on a narrow street, they will just throw their door open into the street, hoping that arriving cars will drive aside and not hit it, then they step right out. Its almost as if they don't understand who will take the most damage if the car coming does not drive aside or stop.

Finally, there is no sense of distance in driving in Belgium. There is no understanding of how long it takes for a car to break. Don't be surprised if the car behind you is only about 1 meter away from you, when you are doing 120km/h. Needless to say, they get a lot of accidents from this lack of understanding of physics. Also don't be surprised of someone reverses into you, happened to me twice.

Be careful. People in Belgium are from my experience the worst drivers in Europe. Its not a about speed, Germans drive faster, its about skill. They get so many accidents in Belgium which can only be a sign of poor driving skills, assuming no-one wants to be in an accident.

I found driving in Brussels surprisingly stressful -- more than you would expect it to be the case in a NW European big city. For me, it's the worst experience so far, apart from Naples, Rome and Florence. Here might be some helpful hints to reduce the stress:

1. Dealing with bad road and traffic planning and managing

Brussels has quite a number of very complicated, not really driver-friendly street layouts. There's multi-lane boulevards, sometimes the lanes diverge into different directions and you are not well directed on choosing the one to suit your direction. The pentagon of boulevards around the inner city features a couple of tunnels intended to avoid crowded intersections. Good if you can go straight but not so good if you need to use the intersection for making a left or right turn and need to react rather quickly in order to stagger away from the central tunnel lanes. Do not exclusively rely on your GPS navigation system. GPS doesn't work in tunnels and the GPS margin of error (up to 50 metres) is too high to allow the navigation system to safely identify the exact lane you're in. I have witnessed two navigation systems to go haywire because of this -- might get you into real trouble if you pay attention too much to your little helping gadget.

2. Slapdash drivers

This was a negative surprise -- I have so far been driving in all of Belgium and never had any problem whatsoever. Brussels has a particularly strange mixture of drivers going at their own pace -- either dead slow or insanely fast. In particular, there are too many cars with 5-6 youths packed in it, the driver obviously thinking that driving like a maniac is cool and somehow a good substitute for the frustration of life -- lack of brains and lack of sexual activity. Be prepared for *** drivers in the street (not applicable to drivers from Italy if from Florence or any city south of Florence).

As a general rule, never drive on the limit -- always have room for straightening out your own mistakes and those of others.

We rented a car at the airport in Brussels and when we went to return it, we needed to fill up our tank or pay the exorbitant refueling charge from the rental car company. Gillian told us where the gas station was at the airport, it's on the wrong side of the road so you have to drive through the arrival/departure area to gas up your rental car (who needs to put gas in their car when they are leaving the airport?!?!?) The station didn't open until 8am, by the time the clerk arrived there was a line formed to get gas.

If you have a Belgian bankcard or a Shell gas card, you can fill up without the attendant but if not, you're out of luck if you have an early flight. We noticed that a lot while driving through Belgium, unlike the US where you can use your credit card at the pump, in Belgium we had to go inside the gas station every time.

This is a crossroad/round point North/North-West of Place de Ste Catherine.
I took this picture from the corner at the end of Quai aux Barbes/Shutetankaai and th Arduinkaai/Quai aux pierres de taille.

Have you counted the traffic signs? If you only count the ones you see the fronts of and that warns you it is a one-way direction, you must come to 8!
But as you can see if you click on the picture to have the full view… there are plenty more traffic signs!
I think it was a sale-out when they bought them!

To the casual observer, Brussels traffic seems to move in a chaotic fashion. There may indeed be some truth in that. When I first arrived I would stand mesmerised, watching cars negotiating crossroads- completely perplexed! In fact, once you understand what they are doing, it's actually all very logical - ineffective, but logical nevertheless.

The basic principle is that you should give way to traffic entering from a road on the right (priority to the right as it's known). This can be quite a hair-raising experience if you happen to be on a major boulevard and a car appears from a side road you hadn't noticed. However if you get into the habit of being prepared to stop at any given moment, you should be OK. BUT watch out - if you stop when you have priority, you give your priority away and other drivers have the right to proceed.

Now hold that principle and let's look at the roundabout protocol. It's exactly the same - which means that you give way to traffic coming on to the roundabout. The cumulative effect of this policy is gridlock - frequent gridlock!

All is not lost though. The city planners have realised that something needs to be done. They have begun to paint tiny triangles at junctions. There are all but invisible unless you meet them head on. In all instances it means that you must give way - whether you are arriving from the right or not.

At last inspection the new system seems to be working... after a fashion.

My best advice though, is to walk - or use the buses - or the metro - or the trams...

Ah yes... trams... therein lies another warning or danger tip!

This is (was) kind of a "do not try this at home" situation.

Usually I come to Brussels with my car via the E40 Highway (coming from Gent). Then at the end I follow the signs "Brussel", and like this I finally arrive in the city centre.

But it is always such a special sight to see at the end of the big boulevard the appearance of the big Basilica of Koekelberg.

So while I was driving I made some pictures of this big church. Of course it is dangerous, especially in the bust Brussels traffic.

And even more dangerous, if you look at the picture as there is a student-driver (ecole = school) in front of me.

...there's one thing to keep in mind. In all of Belgium signs indicating the directions at roads are positioned in such a way that you will only see them when you're already on the right track. When you're on the wrong track you may only notice them when it's too late to correct your direction. This is especially true in this chaotic city. Apparently we needed to leave the city through a tunnel. Only, the sign that said so was placed at the entrance of that very tunnel. And since we were not heading for that tunnel because we didn't know we were supposed to go there we quickly found ourselves back in the labyrinth of one-way streets and traffic-jams that make this city such a hell to drive in. Get the picture? My advice: take the first opportunity to get out of the city and then use the map to correct your direction. It's much better for your nerves.