I experienced confusion about this when I travelled to Indonesia some years ago, but a local taxi driver made it easy to understand: "What's in front of you is your responsibility." It's an unwritten local driving rule and once you know it, the local traffic is considerably easier to grok. No one looks behind them because everyone's agreed that they only worry about things in front of them. If you want to pass a car in front of you then it's up to you to make it work. Likewise with driving a car in the sea of scooters that Indonesian traffic oftentimes is. Worry about the scooters in front of you, the ones behind you and on your sides will do their best to look out for themselves and don't expect much from you.

I look at the rear mirror all the time, especially before stopping. Is that car behind me too fast and will crash into me? A taxi decided that didn't like me stopping at a pedestrian crossing a few nights ago and overtook me. I honked and both the people crossing the street and the taxi stopped. I think the danger trumped the rule of never honking at night in a city.

Was this in Jakarta or a smaller city?

It was in Milan, Italy. Horns are uncommon but there are some random crazy drivers in hurry to get somewhere :-)

Grokked or not, there are more road fatalities.

More or less is relative. In 2019, Indonesia had 15.3 road deaths per 100.000 inhabitants per year [0]. For context, Norway had 2.0, United States had 12.4, and Liberia (the worst on the list) had 35.9, to pick a few random data points. While I definitely agree that the traffic in Indonesia is chaotic and that can lead to more accidents, that doesn't tell the whole story.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...

To me, the Fatalities per mile is the most meaningful metric, but that's very sparsely populated on the chart. The next most meaningful metric on that chart is Fatalities per 100k vehicles.

Somali car owners have a 6.5% chance of dying in their vehicles, annually.

I'm not sure if I see how fatalities per 100k vehicles is a better metric than per 100k inhabitants: the composition of vehicles is very different from country to country. Given the example above, in Indonesia I would expect a very considerable portion to be scooters which while more dangerous for the driver themselves are safer for others. Meanwhile in the United States, cars are the big majority, being safer for the driver but more dangerous to others.

A large percentage of road deaths are pedestrians and cyclists. Especially in countries with fewer cars and more pedestrians. So it's more that as a Somali car owner, you have a 6.5% chance of killing somebody with your vehicle, annually.

Still the number seems incredibly high. Maybe the number of registered vehicles is underreported, with many vehicles just not getting officially registered?

Great explanation, also astonishing at how relatively well this system works in response to lax training. All things considered.

This is how skiing works. You worry about what is in front of you. People behind you have to worry about themselves.

Also, it’s easier to understand when you see the relative speeds of traffic and the relative lack of safety.

How do people back out into a street there?

My guess is that they back into parking spots to avoid that scenario

Yup, the rough heuristic that most drivers follow in India is: if I see empty road ahead of me, I am going in.