Road Tips (First Edition)

Speed Bumps = Topes

I think Mexico should win an award for the biggest variation of speed bumps. When traveling on the highways you will drive through towns where you have to slow down to safely pass through inhabited areas. Outside of the normal speed limit signs you will encounter a series of speed bumps or topes upon entering, driving through and exiting a town. These topes can very from smooth mounds to vehicle shattering vertical obstacles similar to our sidewalk curbs.

In an ideal situation there are signs telling you that there is a speed bump or tope coming up and lets you know how many meters away it is. Then there will be a sign next to the tope and the tope its self will be painted yellow and white. This is an A-typical situation. Usually it will be some sort of combinations of the above: signs but no paint, paint and no signs, or nothing at all. When there are no signs is when it is really dangerous. Learn from me. The last time I was in Mexico I was driving a car from Morelia to Guanaguato and hit an unmarked unpainted speed bump at 54 mph. You can imagine the damage. It was probably left behind from some old rest stop that used to be there. Watch out for those.

Speed Bump Type
The rolling ones are great but, there has been a bunch of times I came up to fast on what I thought was going to be a smooth one and proved to be more like a curb. I looked like a chicken on a pogo stick. On the flip side sometimes they will paint the street like there is a speed bump and there is nothing there at all. Dad says, “ I feel like a cow staring at a painted cattle guard.”
It’s best to really slow down for the first speed bump because it’s hard to see which type it is until you are right on top of it. There is a plus to all this, usually which ever type of speed bump you encounter first will be what they use throughout the whole town.

Coming into big cities they typically don’t have speed bumps they usually use Vibradores (easy ladies).. These are a series of reflectors ran across the road to let you know you need to slow down.. I guess they figure you don’t need speed bumps when you are about to smack right into traffic.