Transportation in Malta

Introduction:

In Malta, people drive on the left side of the road! At first, I had to be really careful when I was crossing the street because I would always look in the wrong direction to see if a car was coming. In addition, the steering wheel is on the right side of the vehicle so it felt really weird at first when I was a passenger in what I'm used to being as the "driver's seat" in the car. There are no highways in Malta so it's impossible to go fast for long periods of time, and drivers tend to be more aggressive. I've been in a few situations where my bus has taken the awning off of a building or scraped another car, and we all just continued along on our commute without hesitation.

How do people get around?:

Almost everybody in Malta owns a tiny car. The streets are very narrow so it's not unusual for people to drive partially on the sidewalk and scrape by. There are public buses that go all around the island but they are much less direct. I have to take two buses over the course of one and a half hours to get to work, but by car, it takes 25 minutes. From my town to the capital, I am able to take a ferry across the harbor. Not a lot of people walk or ride a bicycle here because it is too dangerous with traffic, and many roads do not have sidewalks.

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