I want to blab on a bit about driving in Lithuania but much of what I say here will be equally applicable to other former-Soviet countries.
For a long time, we’ve been including a box about driving in Lithuania in Vilnius In Your Pocket. Here’s the opening paragraph:
Lithuanian drivers are bloody-minded and completely bonkers, making any journey in a car a bit of an edge-of-the-seat adventure. They are especially fond of tailgating, cutting lanes and dangerous overtaking manoeuvres. Indeed, Lithuanian drivers are now, officially, the worst drivers in Europe. The country has the highest rate of fatalities in the European Union.
That attracted the ire of one Lithuanian reader who had picked up a copy of Vilnius In Your Pocket while returning home on a flyLAL flight. (Vilnius In Your Pocket is available to passengers flying on flyLAL flights until April 15.) She wrote a huffy letter to one of the local rags – 15min – who then contacted us for comment. The story of how we had labelled Lithuanian drivers as blood thirsty monsters ended up on the front page, with a hint of pink-eared outrage that we had dared to print the facts and had done so with – shock! horror! – humour.
The article also appeared online (you can see it here) where comments could be added by readers. Out of some 215 comments, 84% were positive, supporting our article and praising us for having dared to write the truth. We call that a result, and our comments on Lithuanian driving will remain. So there!
That would be enough of a story, but events over the Easter weekend added a very sad twist of irony to the story. The son of Lithuania’s Transport Minister was killed in a road accident on the weekend. He was a passenger in a car being driven by his girlfriend. She lost control, and the car spun and slammed into an oncoming trolleybus.
Reports suggest that she was driving very fast. The driver of another car that they passed, who was travelling at around 60kp/h, claims that they passed so fast he could hardly see them. It has also been suggested that the Transport Minister’s son, who was reportedly a safe and careful driver, may have been drinking and therefore asked his girlfriend to drive. That would have been a very wise thing to do were it not for the fact that his girlfriend was to drive him to his death.
The Easter weekend newspapers were also filled with a litany of other reports of other similar accidents from around Lithuania. It makes for deeply depressing reading.
So, while we feel vindicated of the accusation that we are being unnecessarily negative for labelling Lithuanian drivers as dangerous, we are deeply saddened by the seemingly ceaseless carnage on Lithuania’s roads. We also offer sincere condolences to the families of all those who are killed, and continued support for the Transport Minister in his ‘war on the roads’ campaign.
