- #Greenbelt md driving school for adults how to#
- #Greenbelt md driving school for adults drivers#
- #Greenbelt md driving school for adults driver#
- #Greenbelt md driving school for adults license#
- #Greenbelt md driving school for adults professional#
Others such as Kuete are just overwhelmed by the scale of American highways, compared to Africa’s narrow, bumpy roads.
#Greenbelt md driving school for adults how to#
Some say they don’t have any idea how to drive in the ice and snow, since most of their countries have warm climates. In class, Vodi asks his international students to share their experiences. To get a certificate of completion, students must log 30 hours of classroom time and six hours of on-the-road instruction. The school’s 1970s-style office building is also home to a Nigerian dentist, a Vietnamese tax lawyer and a Spanish-speaking chiropractor, who could come in handy if there’s an accident, Vodi noted with a chuckle. On a recent weeknight, Kuete climbed into the Corolla for another lesson at Riteway. “They feel they have power and status in a car.”
#Greenbelt md driving school for adults drivers#
Drivers in every country disregard pedestrians, Vodi says. His recent students include new drivers who came to Washington and its traffic-snarled suburbs from India, Togo, Afghanistan, Haiti and El Salvador, with what Vodi calls “reckless, just reckless habits.” Every country, he says, has its own idiosyncratic driving style. By then, I was married and had three children and the bills were piling up,” says Vodi, who was licensed to teach driving in Maryland and opened his school in 1996 with his wife, Gladys. One day, he noticed a driving-school car when he was stopped at a gas station.
#Greenbelt md driving school for adults driver#
In 1995, he became a taxi driver because he thought it would pay well. For a decade, he worked at the Embassy of Ghana and the World Bank, doing office and translation work. When he arrived in Maryland, he failed his driving test. People drive on sidewalks! They pass on the right! It’s not for the faint-hearted.” He’d driven only a little bit in Ghana, but “nobody there follows any traffic rules. He came to the United States on a tourist visa in 1978, and ultimately became an American citizen in 2002. He went to bilingual secretarial school in Accra, the nation’s capital, and got a job with Air Afrique. They are not, he jokes, from a car accident.
#Greenbelt md driving school for adults professional#
He has three vertical cuts under each eye, which, he explains, “are traditional Ghanian marking for the seventh born, which is considered special and expected to achieve professional success.” Short and compact with circular eyeglasses, a calm demeanor and a neatly trimmed goatee, Vodi was born the seventh son of illiterate rural cocoa farmers in Axim, a costal region of Ghana. In Spanish, we say on the roads it’s ‘The law of the strongest,’ where the biggest car will cut everyone else off,” said Ucles, who’s originally from Honduras and has worked on dozens of television and Internet campaigns with local Spanish-language news stations. “I know firsthand how people drive in our countries and it’s, wow, just chaotic. About 90 percent of traffic injuries occur in developing countries, according to a 2009 report issued by the World Health Organization (WHO), the most recent data available.
#Greenbelt md driving school for adults license#
a bribe) if you’re caught driving without a license or proper documentation.Ĭountries such as Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, India, Kenya and Nigeria consistently have the world’s highest rates of traffic fatalities.
Driving backward down a one-way street, for instance, is fairly common elsewhere in the world, says Jose Ucles, spokesman for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a Washington-based government agency.Īs one of the most international regions in the country, the Washington metro area is home to drivers from countries where there is little or no driver education, where the rule of law is weak, the roads are narrow and everyone knows you can pay a “fine” (a.k.a. Adults relearning to drive in a country with stricter traffic laws than their own must first unlearn their old habits. poses specific challenges for non-English speakers - not least of which is bearing the brunt of foreign-driver stereotypes. While there are plenty of inept drivers who are American-born, driving in the U.S. “The world lives here and sooner or later they drive here,” says Riteway owner Vodi, who is from Ghana and now lives in Lanham. Driving instructors in the Washington region jokingly call it “the other DWI” - Driving While Immigrant. Kuete taps the bumper of a parked car while backing out.Įvery year, legions of immigrants from all over the world must learn to navigate Washington’s crazy quilt of traffic circles, one-way streets, cul-de-sacs, Beltway merges and, most recently, bike lanes.
0 kommentar(er)
