- Hi, there's smart drivers.
In Madrid, we're going to do some roundabouts for you today
and show you how to do those.
We'll find some multi-lane roundabouts as well.
(car signal ticking)
Lots of looking, shoulder checking.
The interesting thing about driving in Spain,
is people push their way through places.
Lights are green,
there's very little jay walking here.
I think they know that they're going to get run over.
(car signal ticking)
Multi-lane, there's three lanes in this roundabout.
(car signal ticking)
And some of these roundabouts also
have traffic lights in them.
You can see right here there's a traffic light.
And you stay in your lane until
you get to the exit that you want.
Now, if you do need to change lanes,
you push over as this truck in front of us is signaling.
Everybody waited for him.
Shoulder checking and you can see
that the traffic crawls.
They're pushing in,
but there's very little signaling
and people are just moving around.
And again, I'm managing my space in front of my vehicle.
I'm close, but I'm not as close
as people the other people are.
And I'm going to stay in the right lane,
so other traffic can move around me.
Speed limits 50 kilometers an hour here
which is 30 miles an hour.
The other interesting piece about here is,
I can hear the emergency vehicle.
I have no idea where it is.
Oh, there's the emergency vehicle.
That was a police.
But you can see that the traffic doesn't move over here
the same way that it does in the United States
and in Canada that it's required to do.
And a third, approximately a third
of the vehicles here are motorcycles.
And you can see they do that lane splitting where they move
up between the spaces of the cars
and get to the front of the line
and then take off.
The other piece,
this is a three cylinder Romana car.
And as soon as they take my foot off the clutch
and have it in neutral,
the engine shuts off.
It's part of pollution controls here in Europe,
because of the number of vehicles.
Push the clutch back in,
put it back into gear,
the engine starts right back up again.
Now the automatic shutoff on the motor doesn't work
as well as one would think.
Like right now I'm sitting here
and it's in neutral,
I have my foot off the clutch,
but the car didn't shut off,
the engine didn't shut off for whatever reason.
Now this is an interesting configuration on a roundabout.
It's a roundabout with the main road
through the center of it.
So we can essentially turn around
and go back the way we came.
And distracted driving is alive and well in Madrid,
as it is in other places.
This woman is on her phone texting beside me.
And we have a red light.
So there's no right turn on a red light here.
And I haven't confirmed that yet,
but I haven't seen anybody else make a right on a red turn.
And this person is driving in front of me is not
making a right on a red.
So I'm pretty sure that you're not allowed
to do that here in Madrid.
And if you look at the video of me in New York City
with my friend, Sam,
taking the mock driver's test in in the Bronx there,
I failed that driver's test for that exact reason,
that you can't make a right on a red turn.
I'll put a card up in the corner
for you have a look at that.
And this is the other interesting thing about Madrid,
it's, there's this,
there's a traffic light right there,
we waited for that,
we come around the corner
and there's another traffic light
right here for pedestrians.
And then you have to obey that light.
So it really slows down traffic.
(car signal clicking)
And the road's going to narrow here.
So I'm not going to get in up and
beside this big truck.
And the red light before the roundabout here,
controlling traffic and movement through the roundabouts.
(upbeat music playing)
(car signal clicking)
Merging, picking my spot
and going.
(car signal clicking)
Now I want to go back the way I came
but I need to figure out how to get turned around here.
So that's the other thing about driving around in cities,
if you don't know where you you're going,
you want to get your landmarks.
(car signal clicking)
Of course that's closed.
Sunglasses off.
And again, you know, maintaining your space in front,
despite what everybody else is doing
in terms of social driving.
Same thing here in Madrid,
for the traffic light's going to turn,
it's flashing green for the pedestrian crosswalk.
So I know mine is going to turn green here.
It's gone red.
(car signal clicking)
My light turns.
Again, the other thing you have to be careful of here.
(car signal clicking)
That car went over to the lane there.
Is the light around the corner,
like right around the corner?
So again, the light green here
and there's a light right around the corner here,
so when you come around the corner
you got to stop for this light.
And of course that's a bus lane.
So we need to go into the center lane.
And the taxi cab is right behind me.
They're not honking at me being-
Yeah.
The taxi cab proceeded,
so we were good on the yellow.
So that's a sample of driving around Madrid.
There weren't as many roundabouts
as I thought there would be.
However, they have an interesting system here
where they have a big roundabout
and then the main road drives through the center of it.
And if you want to turn,
or you want to move left,
you've got to go around the roundabout,
which is actually safer because you're reducing
the points of conflict in the intersection.
And this is how close they are.
The buses like I didn't quite get over far enough.
(car signal clicking)
A bus just pulled right up beside me.
And of course, this is the way it is in Europe.
Spaces are tight, it's close,
but at one in the same time,
there seems to be a very good organization of traffic,
that people obey the rules.
Very little jay walking.
So there's a sample of driving in Madrid, smart drivers.
It's closer.
There's rules.
Lots of traffic lights,
roundabouts with the main road
going through the large roundabout.
That's the way you make a left,
which reduces points of conflicts.
It's a little bit safer.
So have fun.
Enjoy your trip in Europe
and remember pick the best answer.
Not necessarily the right answer.
Have a great day. Bye now.