Helen Van Berkel has her heart in her mouth when she takes to the road in Hawaii.
Terror was like a barrel of rabid rats clawing my insides. A couple of times I decided I just couldn't do this. But it was too late: the smiling woman gave me the keys and in her friendly American accent wished me a "nice day". You've got this, I reassured myself, hopping into the passenger seat of my rental car, hopping out and nonchalantly scuttling around the car to the seat that had the steering wheel.
I scrabbled against the driver's door for the gear stick, turned on the window wipers to indicate my intention to pull out and eased on to the Nimitz Highway to drive to Waikiki.
What if I crashed? What if locals ran me off the road and snatched my keys? I wished for a big "tourist" sign and flashing lights to warn other drivers away, but unfortunately my blue Hyundai Elantra hatchback and later my silver Nissan Rogue SUV blended in with the locals. Much of Hawaii is criss-crossed by freeways and there's enough traffic to follow in the tricky bits. The only guidance the internet offered had been Grand Theft Auto-style driving games — not how I intended to drive in Hawaii — or Bad Drivers USA videos on YouTube. All I learned from the latter was that angry people who make road-ragey videos have overactive horn fingers.
I only met one triggered horn-honker — when I drifted a little to the right of my freeway lane. Otherwise I got a polite little honk to remind me that you're allowed to turn right on a red light in the US, a logical option that nevertheless feels so wrong; one for stopping on an orange, which no one does. I puzzled for ages why I got honked (politely) for waiting for oncoming traffic on a left turn until, while freaking as a queue of traffic turned left on the red, I noticed the green arrow at the far side of the intersection, multiple lanes away from the red lights. So don't expect the arrows to be in a logical place — and watch out for pedestrian crossings that seem to be at every intersection.
