t's a mixed bag here. Two main points:
1. Drivers are courteous, if you're not an idiot. Put your blinker on to change lanes, you will get in within a car or two passing by. But change lanes without signaling, you'll get honked at and tailgated.
2. We generally only paint lines on the street within a half dozen or so metres of an intersection, and even those fade quickly. So if you pull up to an intersection, JUST ***ING ASSUME THERE IS A LEFT-TURN LANE. Because we treat almost all of them as if there is. There's no faster way to tell a tourist than you stopped at a light in the middle of a lane that is as wide as two cars. Pull over as far to the left as you can without blocking opposing traffic. This is just the main one of the quirks that develop in an old city with a nonsensical street grid and roads that were designed to be driven on the left.
This is true of wide streets:
And narrow ones (notice the faded turning lane - USE IT!)
Another is parking. Striped medians, grassy medians, etc. You can park on them all. But don't block fire lanes. Fires are a big fucking deal here. The smallest blaze is reported like a car chase in L.A. because our entire city can burn to the ground pretty quick, and has at least four times. DO NOT BLOCK THE FIRE LANES. It's like lighting up a smoke in a lung cancer ward. You will be lynched.
This is parking in St. John's, and I only filmed a few minutes on a Sunday. It's worse at basically any other time:
• Video Link
Excluding rush hour, traffic usually flows 10-30km over the speed limit, depending on the road. Generally, people keep accelerating as fast as they can go. If the distance between one light and next is long enough to get up to 70-80 in a 50-60 zone, do it. Flow with the traffic. Don't be that one idiot who goes the speed limit and everyone has to zip around.