Reckless Driving Behaviour
I've been to the Azores twice and spent a total of 6 weeks there across 6 islands. I always rented a car and probably spent at least 3000km on the roads. Over this time I've had a lot of close call encounters with local cars driving frankly completely recklessly and a lot of times very unskilled. Some situations:
- Locals overtaking me while I was driving at (or slightly above) the speed limit, despite opposing traffic and clearly not enough distance between us. I've had a lot of these risky encounters. Twice, both me and the other traffic had to hard brake and fully stop to avoid a disaster.
- Again, despite driving at or above speed limit, often at higher speed roads (80-100Km/h) locals tailgating me, driving maybe 2-3 meters behind me. If I only slightly had to brake, this would have caused a bad accident
- Just randomly stopping on the street or, when something was parked on their side of the road, switching lanes despite opposing traffic
- Indicating at roundabouts? Seemed completely random. Some indicated left/right/not at all. Couldn't find a pattern.
- Driving twice the speed limit, e.g. when driving through villages
- Completely ignoring the middle line, driving on my side of the road for no reason
- Slipping left to right on straight road, seemingly not being able to drive consistently in the middle of their lane (like drunk drivers)
- Severly cutting curves despite oppising traffic (me)
- I wittnessed a mini bus full of tourists overtaking me on a curvy road with way over 100Km/h. Don't wanna know how the tourists inside felt during this unnecessary manouver. It was a super close call right before a curve and opposing traffic.
I fully understand that driving behind rented cars (i.e. tourists) that go way slower than the speed limit is annoying (I hated it too lol). Especially when it's a one-lane road. But again, I'm definitely not a slow driver, and I can only wonder how much worse these encounters must be for new/unskilled drivers. Anyway, the first thing everyone gets taught when learning how to drive: You don't take risks, especially when overtaking. If you're not sure, you just don't do it. I often felt unsafe and ended up just letting locals behind me pass, whenever I had a chance to preemtively avoid failed overtaking manouvers.
I'm wondering if I'm the only one who experienced this? Is it just a subjective thing or is there actually a driving problem in the Azores and it's a known issue? As in, maybe a higher accident rate than on EU/Portugal average? I almost never saw police controls on the roads either.
Really don't mean to rant on the locals. I witnessed a lot of stupidity from the tourists, too, especially randomly stopping to take photos or driving unreasonably slow, causing huge queues behind them. But not the same recklessness as from the local drivers. Wondering if anyone has some insights.