Fun_People Archive
7 Oct
Panamanian driving techniques

Date: Thu,  7 Oct 93 04:01:52 PDT
To: Fun_People
Subject: Panamanian driving techniques

 From: griffith@argos5.DNET.NASA.GOV (Peter C. Griffith)

I spent 14 fascinating months living in Panama (not with any of the US
colonial groups) and would like to report that drivers very commonly
drive like maniacs at night with no lights on in the mountains.  Why?
I asked many times.  Actually, I asked "Por que?"  The theory was that
if you had your lights off, you would have a better chance of seeing
the lights of the other guy before he came around the corner.  This
explanation was offered seriously by several people who I knew from long
acquaintance to be intelligent.  You might detect the logical fallacy
here, but I was unable to make much headway in explaining it to
Panamanians, who otherwise are as clever and versitile a group as I have
found anywhere.

© 1993 Peter Langston