By Emma James
When we are young, one of the first lessons we learn is not to get into cars with strangers. It goes along with don’t take lollies from strangers and look both ways before crossing the road.
When we grow up, that first lesson becomes less important as we jump into cabs and onto buses on an almost daily basis, assuming we will arrive at our intended destination safely, free to carry on our business for the day.
Perhaps though we should take more heed of that primal safety lesson, especially in foreign places. As travellers and tourists we climb into cars trusting these strangers will take us where we ask even though we have no idea where that is.
Imagine being in a foreign city where you don’t speak the language. You’ve just managed to make the cabbie understand where you want to go and have perhaps agreed a price.
You buckle-up (if you have that luxury) and watch out the window as the car veers around corners, up streets and down a dark alley. Is that alley a shortcut or are you being taken in some kind of ritual kidnapping of tourists about to lose all your possessions and left only with your underwear?
Of course when you ask any questions, the cabbie’s limited vocabulary, has suddenly disappeared altogether, just as you might soon as well.
But usually you arrive safely and live to tell the tale of the “scenic” journey you took and the exorbitant amount of money you paid for it; again the driver’s vocabulary disappeared when you tried to negotiate on the rate.
We all so freely place our trust in hundreds of strangers in our everyday lives and often where are personal safety is involved – hairdressers, dentists, doctors and the list goes on.
A recent study out of the University of British Columbia in Canada explains that “large-scale societies in which strangers regularly engage in mutually beneficial transactions are puzzling”.
Yet behavioural experiments show that members of these societies continue to interact in “fair, trusting and cooperative behaviour”.
Looking at the taxi-ride, it is technically a mutually beneficial; you get to where you want (you hope) and the driver receives payment (sometimes more than you would like). So we place our trust in the taxi driver and assume we will be a) alive at the end of the trip and b) in the place we wanted to go.
Is that trust however somewhat mis-guided?
Obviously unless we hire our own mode of transport we must rely on strangers. But in countries with rather lax road rules it is more than just the “scenic” route that can be a problem
Take for instance a recent four hour mini-van ride I took with a friend and 10 locals between Trat and Bangkok in Thailand
Our driver was attempting to break the land-speed record and was only thwarted by a few stubborn drivers refusing to move to the left-hand lane despite our driver’s furious light flashing. Most other drivers had enough sense to dart out of the way at the sight of our van looming in their rear-view mirrors
The swerving skills of our driver were excellent. Left then right with pure precision, he even considered using the right-hand shoulder to overtake a couple of times and only once sent our van head-long towards the concrete barrier in the middle road.
Our record attempting journey was halted only by the gridlock of Bangkok’s traffic where we did arrive safely, albeit with a few internal organs dislodged and some frayed nerves
The locals in the van never once seemed concerned, so it was obviously a common manner of driving in Thailand. Which means perhaps our trust in this particular driver was well placed. If the locals had been concerned, as they were on a mountain taxi ride in Morocco where it seemed certain we were going to park the rickety old Mercedes at the bottom of a 400m ravine, it would have been a different story.
So perhaps it’s not the echoes of our parents words “never get in a car with a stranger” we need to follow, but instead the locals. If they seem comfortable, then relax and trust you’ll be okay. If they’re worried, then it may be time to grab a pen and paper and write your will.
Emmas new web site is……….
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
Outstanding article! I’m going to link to it, because I think it’s great. Reminds me of Cuba, where the picking up of hitchhikers IS the national transportation strategy.
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Emma, thanks for bringing back memories ……
Mini bus ride from Kathmandu to Pokkhara – foothills of the Annapurnas. eight hours of brake-pedal pumping hayhem up and down incredibly twisty little roads. When we got there the driver put the bus up on blocks and bled the brakes. Jeeeesussss !
On the way – curiously at a flat stretch – there was a full-sized bus brand new, lying on its side with not a sole in attendance…. Yikes !
Wild card entry into religion.
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Gez and I travelled by bus from Argentina to Chile over the Andes, was it ever scary ! People on the bus, the fellow strangers, were nice tho and we comforted each other during the trip. We spoke broken Spanish mixed with Italian, and they replied in kind, some English thrown in…
Some prayed, some were telling amusing stories, we survived. I’ll remember those kind strangers with fondness for the rest of my life.
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Here’s a couple of interesting links dealing with recent ideas in human cooperation
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100428101448.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100426182002.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090903163550.htm
I know it’s a well worn fatuity but strangers are just friends you haven’t met yet. There’s been a great deal of research done over the past few years on the origin and nature of human co-operation and there can be no doubt that cooperative behaviour is the norm for most of the higher apes.
Warfare and the current quasi neofacsist mode that characterises most of the so called Western Democratic Market economies, that’s the aberration. It’s not dissimilar to the kind of raiding parties that Chimps go on, capturing and murdering other monkeys, particularly the Colobus monkeys that share their forest. (http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~stanford/chimphunt.html)
A casual observer could be forgiven for thinking they do it for fun, for sport.
The truth is we’re nothing more than fancy animals ourselves and all our deep thinking and highly scientific rationalisations stand little chance when our blood is up. Humans and chimps both have substantial anger management problems.
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Mirriyuula, Father O’Way is easier to understand, sometimes
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Many years ago when overseas Tutu and I were taken on a cab ride in Paris. Lets just say I wish I had my brown trousers on but as you say Emma, eventually you get there, you live to tell the tale but you often wonder how.
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