Traffic incidents/arrests

To clarify, my particular situation and some of those mentioned on this post are governed by the law in Nicaragua. Here is an excerpt from The US Embassy website:

"Nicaraguan law requires that a driver be taken into custody for driving under the influence or being involved in an accident that caused serious injury or death, even if the driver is insured and appears not to have been at fault. The minimum detention period is 48 hours; however, detentions frequently last until a judicial decision is reached (often weeks or months), or until a waiver is signed by the injured party (usually as the result of a cash settlement)."

In my case, I was detained because there were injured aprties, even though I had full coverage. I held out for 8 days because I didn't want to settle on the outrageous amounts they were trying to get out of me.

I've been driving in Nicaragua since 1989, and there are a couple of things you can do. First, they would like to get rich in the deal, but the cops are just looking to supplement their pay. I am not making excuses for them - Lord knows they would empty your bank if they could, but on the other hand, the pay is grossly low, even by Mexican standards. They have an internal name for it. In Mexico, it's called "mordido" by everyone. There is, and I can't remember at this moment, a slang term where they combine the the word "bribe" and the term "lunch money." Anyway, that's their frame of mind.

In Managua, the price to scoot on about your own business is 100 cords. If you are a Nica, you can scoot for 50 some of the time. I take two approaches, depending on my read of the cop, or what I perceive his/her mood to be:

1. Don't pay at all.

Don't you dare speak a lick of Spanish. Speak only english, and talk to his face in a real conversational way. "Oh gee, I am glad you are here (pull out your map or something else) I am trying to get to Nagarote, where I am supposed meet the others from the Peace Corps. We're building sustainable ecosystems, blah blah blah and I am lost. Can you help me?" Then he'll say something, and you reply "I don't understand spanish, do you understand english?" and then repeat the very same thing you did in the beginning. Hit yourself in the forehead, call yourself stupid. Then say "Oh my God, not you! I meant me!!! I am so stupid, dammit! I did it again. This can go on from either two minutes, to over a half an hour - they key is not utter a word of spanish. If you say anything beyond si or no, you are busted annd you'll be expect to understand. Also, it's key too have a real, one sided conversation. If you are just talking bullcrap and he understands half of what you are saying you're in big trouble. If you choose to do this, the very worst thing that has ever happened to me is that he will pull out his own wallet and point to the iside of it, demonstrating what he wants. Give him 100 and be happy about it. Most of the time, they get frustrated and let you go - especially if it's a high traffic area and lots of people around.

2. Pay

Getting back to my wife, pray that you don't get pulled over when your Nica wife is in the car. First off there is the universal rule of women. And that, simply stated is "I know you are a world famous, respected aerospace engineer, but you are married to me, therefore you're retarded, and you don't know what the hell you are talking about..." If she is a Nica, you can append to the end "my country and the way we do things, blah blah blah."

One fateful night, we were driving and we get flagged down coming out of the rotunda. Woman cop on the left side of the street, man cop on the right. She is saying stop, and he is saying pull forward and park on the right. Man, that's a hard call. What would you do? I go with my brother in humanity, and pull forward and start to park on the right. Bad move, she thinks I am running. He finally calms her down, and tells her he was directing me otherwise, and then they get into a fight with each other. You get the picture, it's a bad scene.

Since my wife is unmistakeably Nica, and here is another point - if your wife is unmistakeably Nicaraguan, then she is also unmistakeably Indonesean, Pakistani, Iranian, Iraqi, Indian, Eskimo, Egyptian, Brazilian, light skinned black, you name it, depending on what airport security checkpoint you are at or country you happen to be in at the time. So the stupid gringo tactic is out of the question, because if they can't communicate with me, they sure as hell can tell her.

"Honey, I'll handle this" is how all good arguments start, pulling 100 cords out of my pocket. "You idiot, you are going to insult them! Shut up and I'll do the talking." Hmmm, maybe she's gonna go for the Ninca price! Nice... I do love her so much. She gives the woman $20 US. Do I get a $#($*#*$ police escort home too? Claro que no. In fact, the guy cop is like "I don't think so, where's my $20? $40 US. My only saving grace in the whole deal is that after they got the money in their hands, the woman cop lectures my wife that because she's Nicaraguense, she should have known to not pay more than 100 cords. And the guy cop starts laughing histerically. Big ha ha. She blew my mordida budget for the entire decade in less than 60 seconds.

So if you know spanish, be respectful and cheerful. Ask them if it is possible to pay the fine here, rather than going to court. Position it like it is their job to accept the fine, and you'll avoid the unlikely chance that you are accused of offering a bribe. Did I say unlikely chance? I'd bet $100 US that pigs (no pun intended) will fly before a Nica cop turns down lunch money.

100 cords in Managua. Maybe it could be less in Esteli, Matagalpa and other far away podunk places. Leon is also 100 cords. SJDS and Granada might even be 100 US by now, hahaha.

I got the shakedown driving through Managua last year. A truck loaded with police pulled in front of me. At the next some fat slob in a uniform hopped out of the back and started giving me a hassle. A small bribe later we were on our way. What a load of crap.

As for bad experiences I know of several sorts of similar to Fyl experience below. One was common in Managua years ago though this happened in Leon. You would be driving along at 2 mph or whatever near a corner or something and someone crashes a bicycles into the side of the car. In the one case my sister's friends car was hit by a young man stupid enough to have his baby sister (maybe 4 years) on the front of the bike to make it look worse. You can pretty much guess it is a scam when all 3 his other brothers also happen to just be buying newspapers at that corner and one miraculously claims to have a photo of the accident on the camera he is holding. Luckily the girl was not hurt. The bike was all bent and the car damaged. It was never officially settled since several businessmen there at the corner threatened to do more than just damage a bike if they didn't leave. People were pushing each other around, not just yelling. They meant leave Leon, not the scene, so we assumed the brothers were thieves from another city but I do not know for sure. They wanted a lot of money I forget the amount, maybe 50 times the cost of the bike. The only option of "lets go to the hospital" is a good way to go. If they say no you have far less to worry about. If they say yes and are not hurt you could usually get paperwork or a note from someone there stating this. This same bicycle scam happened to many people. I know of 2 tourists who were target of it. One took the bike driver to the hospital in the car hit by the bike and cause she left the scene she ended up paying quite a bit maybe $700 even though there were no injuries. In the other case the price dropped from $6000 to $6 after they heard the driver making a cell phone call to his Embassy. Was not a real call, but people standing there do not know that. The police were not involved in this last one.

My former bosses brother (Australian) was a passenger in a car driven by a guy he hardly know as they were going to buy equipment parts. He did not own the car the driver did. They were hit buy a truck which failed to stop and the truck driver did not have license and did not have annual registration. The car couldn't be moved from the scene (would not start again anyway) though it was later claimed it was moved. The guy in the truck might have been drinking. The truck driver was a friend of some police. All the people in the car were taken to jail. Only the tour foreigners in the car stayed in jail and the two Nicaraguan passengers were released. They didn't have much money to steal from them so they were not needed not even as witnesses. They were there nearly 6 days. Partly because they needed to be in business meeting in another city and one needed to leave the country they settled the matter by paying the truck driver paying the police supervising them and also paying the police who were a friend of the truck driver. There was no shortage of witnesses to what happened. Didn't matter to the "case". Later, many items were stolen from and off the car by the time it was retrieved the end of the 3rd day. At the time the police would not reveal where the car had been taken or who had it so no one could collect it.

When in Managua a friend from Holland was in an accident with another car. He was not at fault for anything and was hit by a car while parked legally with the car not even running. He and the other driver ended up at the jail. The initial demand from him to pay to fix the other car plus $3000. He refused to pay either. However after one day a different guy was in the jail taking the place of the guy really driving the car the day of the accident. Apparently only my friend noticed the new guy and the police swore it was the same guy (he somehow got shorter and fatter and and younger in two nights in jail!). My friend took this as a hint they were prepared to wait it out however long it took. He eventually paid an amount to the police maybe $65 each to 4 and paid the like $500 to the driver of the car who destroyed his car. About six months later he was back in the jail after having beating senseless the other driver in a local restaraunt. The same police let him go amazingly claiming no evidence. He just assumed the other guy had done something to piss off these police and that is why they let him go because they easily could have gotten more money this time around.

Not everyone who chooses not to drive though they maybes do in other countries does so for fear of police at accident scenes or only that. For many people it is not worth having a car and all that goes with it if you will only use it Sundays or something like that. Most people I know chose not to have the car in Nicaragua (or Honduras or Costa Rica) due to problems of theft from it or of it, or safe storage, or because good mechanics are hard to come buy, etc. Strange thing I noticed is that in all the countries I have been in and the 1000's and 1000's of times I have used a taxi, I have never been in a taxi stopped by the police (no matter how fast we were going) and never seen a taxi stopped by the police. Maybe I am just lucky but I easyly use a taxi more than a 20 times a week for decades.

When I was first here I "hit" a kid selling fruit and such as I was leaving Estelí on the Pan Am. I believe it was staged. I was going very slow (because it was very near a major bus stop and there were lots of people around). The kid was hit by my right front fender and fell down spilling the tray of stuff he was selling. Two or three other kids where immediately there to "talk to me".

The one I hit was maybe 11. The others were a bit older--14 to 16, I believe. They immediately started talking about liability, calling the police, how he was very injured, ... First, I knew enough to not move my car even though I was blocking the Pan Am highway. If you move your vehicle you are immediately at fault. Instead, I offered to take the injured kid to the hospital (which was about 100 meters away) and for them to call the police if they wanted.

The injured kid got up and seemed to be totally uninjured. The other kids had some reasonable "price" for me to pay. I don't remember but it may be in my blog from when this happened. I didn't go for it and kept offering to take him to the hospital.

The final settlement was basically that I paid for the fruit that was damaged and I was on my way.

I tend to be pretty stubborn when faced with a scam and this sure felt like one. I have been stopped by police looking for a bribe once in Costa Rica and once in Nicaragua. Both times I was very "cooperative" on a legal level but never went for the bribe.

I am very willing to contribute as you suggest but that has been donating some equipment to the fire department and pouring a reasonable amount of rum into a police captain friend here. I am all for increasing average income in Nicaragua but I just don't like the bribe approach.