The most dangerous thing you can do in Tbilisi is cross the street. Pedestrians have only nominal rights and you can expect Georgian drivers to blow through the crosswalk, horn blaring, foot on the gas, even when you have the green walk light. I have personally witnessed four pedestrians hit by cars in the four months or so I’ve lived in Tbilisi. 90 people died and 3,834 were injured as a result of road accidents in Tbilisi in 2015. Most were pedestrians.
The second most dangerous thing you can do in Tbilisi is breathe the air. There are no enforceable emission control standards here and the average car on the street is ten years old. When the catalytic converters fail, they are never replaced because this is an unnecessary and high expense. Public transportation (buses and mashrutkas) are among the biggest offenders, but Tbilisi is currently upgrading their buses to new, eco-friendly ones. Of course, whether or not these new buses will be maintained is another issue.
Georgians have a love affair with their cars that reminds me very much of life in the US in the 60’s. Never mind the gas-guzzling polluters, just look at me in my cool car. The men are especially egregious — they make a point of gunning it down the avenue at all hours, weaving in and out of traffic, horn blaring, running red lights, blocking the intersections, and generally “asserting their authority” in all instances. They will usually slow down when passing any religious relic and cross themselves, however. “Look God, I’m a good person (when you can see me from the church)!”
The Georgian driving test is thirty questions (out of a possible 1000 that you can study). You can only miss three to pass. The actual in-car driving exam is only done on a closed course. There is some talk in Parliament about revising the examination and including real-world driving, but I think it’s just talk. There is no talk at all in Parliament of implementing emission standards because that would really piss off the Georgians who own cars. Many of them would have to give up their cars because they could not afford to keep them maintained and tuned.
However, I still love this city. I simply have adapted. I look ten times before I cross the street and, occasionally, a driver actually stops for me. There is hope here.