The Traffic Police

Well the police do not too much as we have seen just yet. They do not help people stopped on the side of the road, that is for sure! We have only seen them at major accidents on the TV. Who does control the traffic? The CET. Do not know what it stands for, but they are the traffic police. If you are driving on the day you are not allowed due to your license plate? They give you a ticket. If there is a car stopped on the highway here in town? They are holding up traffic. And if you want to have a rally outside the mall? They are the ones who will block the entrance to your condominium so you can't get in or out.

What is this you say? Well Sunday there was a rally at the mall outside our house. Great to have a mall so close for shopping, but not so much during a rally. We thought it was some political thing because elections are this weekend. No. It was a labor union rally because the mall has decided to open 2 hours earlier on Sundays. It sounded like a Hitler/Castro/Chavez speech outside. Well actually inside too. They had the microphone so loud it sounded like I had all of my electronics up as loud as possible. But it wasn't music. It was a guy screaming into a microphone!! It went on for 3 hours!!!! With fireworks of course.

But back to the traffic police. There are sections of the city that have the traffic cameras that the US is embracing. Well, these are not at traffic lights to catch light runners. No. These are in the middle of the streets and go for quarter mile stretches. At first we could not figure out why people would suddenly slow down to 10 km below the speed limit. Now we know. If you get five tickets you can get your license suspended. Luckily they do not have Ricardo's license. So far since we have been here, we have gotten 5 tickets. And we still have one more week to see if there are more because we just found out about these this last week. One ticket was for 8km over the limit. These guys are sticklers! So, if you happen to be driving in Sao Paulo and the other drivers suddenly slow down, follow their lead. It is to your benefit.