Driving in Romania is almost identical to driving in America — until it isn’t. Same side of the road, same pedals, same lanes. What changes is where the traffic light hangs, who has priority, and how fast the speed limit drops.
I’m an American who has lived in Timișoara for over a year. This is a real 19-minute drive through the city and out onto the national roads, with everything a first-time visitor gets wrong explained as we go.
CAN AN AMERICAN DRIVE IN ROMANIA? Yes. If you can drive in the US you can drive here. You need your home licence plus an International Driving Permit for a short stay, and the car needs a rovinietă (road vignette) for national roads and motorways.
WHAT IS THE BIGGEST DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DRIVING IN ROMANIA AND THE US? The traffic light hangs over YOUR stop line, not across the far side of the junction. Stop past the line and the light is above and behind you, and you cannot reverse to see it.
CAN YOU TURN RIGHT ON RED IN ROMANIA? No. Never — unless a small flashing green arrow beside the light says so. This is the single most common mistake Americans make here.
WHAT IS THE SPEED LIMIT IN ROMANIA? 50 km/h in any town or village, 90 on the open road, 100 on expressways, 130 on the motorway. The blood-alcohol limit is 0.00%. There is no allowance to drink into.
WHY IS THERE A STOP SIGN UNDER A WORKING TRAFFIC LIGHT? Because when the signal is switched off or flashing amber, the sign takes over. You will never see both in America.
WHAT ABOUT TRAMS? Timișoara runs trams, trolleybuses and buses, and two of the three are yellow. A moving tram has priority at an unsignalled junction, and where a tram stops with no island the passengers step down into your lane — that is your problem, not theirs.
Chapters
0:00 Intro
0:15 Timișoara — an ordinary morning
1:22 The light isn’t where you expect it
2:42 The signs the rental desk won’t explain
5:07 Three kinds of yellow — tram, trolleybus, bus
7:07 The centre
9:41 What real life looks like
11:16 People — the part you actually have to watch
12:24 Out of town
16:47 Last light
WATCH NEXT — each link opens at the exact moment, not the start
Driving and parking, from my honest first year here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8PTvKuCO-A&t=453s
The one thing about Romanian traffic lights: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXKOcWn_hAE&t=358s
Why I chose Timișoara — the centre with no traffic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_sgZRm3w9A&t=240s
Driving Romania to Croatia, now that the border is open: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds1YlAeox4Y&t=35s
American vs Romanian holidays, the rules: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Li7j1bGl9uQ&t=35s
The Romanian words you actually need — imediat, gata, hai: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVP_dJsvpw0&t=960s
Pentru românii care se uită: da, se vede că sunt american după cum conduc. Spuneți-mi în comentarii ce am greșit sau ce am uitat, mai ales la prioritatea de dreapta și la tramvaie. Chiar citesc toate comentariile.
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Dash cam: https://amzn.to/4eQ9jxR
Mic: https://amzn.to/4gZSOlv
Music (Creative Commons — credit required)
“Gentle Breeze”, “Somewhere New”, “Bloom”, “Star Bright” by Purrple Cat — https://purrplecat.com — CC BY-SA 3.0
“Late-Night Decaf”, “Downtown Walk” by | e s c p | — https://www.escp.space
“Park Coffee” by Filo Starquez — CC BY-ND 3.0
Sourced via https://www.free-stock-music.com
Licence plates have been blurred. Filmed on a 70mai dash cam in Timișoara, Romania.
#DrivingInRomania #Romania #Timisoara #AmericanInRomania #ExpatLife #RomaniaTravel #DashCam #RentACar #EasternEurope #traveltips
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22 Comments
The question I get most: **"What's the procedure to get a Romanian driving
licence?"** Short version — for a visit you don't need one, your home licence
is enough. If you become a resident you have to exchange it, and here's the part Americans don't expect: **they keep
your American licence.** You hand it over and you don't get it back. But now you can drive in the US on your Romanian license.
Romanians — tell me what I got wrong. I already know I'm going to hear about
prioritatea de dreapta and about people who stop dead at an empty roundabout. 👇
And if you're planning to rent a car here, ask me anything below. I answer all
of these.
Romanian stop lights and traffic rules are pretty much standard, like across Europe, nothing special…. Go to Hungary, there you can find weird and confusing stop lights
You should do a driving video in Oradea. You will see there are different challenges and different infrastructure. There are a lot of roadworks too.
Busses and all public transport vehicles always have the right of way when pulling out from a station refuge unless they have a traffic light. You always need to give way to them or else you risk a fine and points on your license.
2:33 if you're a melting pot of people you'd need symbols that are universal and easy to understand, not words in English
3:25, never four full signs on one pole in the Netherlands. Three is the max.
4:55, but only at an equal crossing. When say a car on a sandpath comes from the right, he has no right of way. When all roads or paths are from sand, then the right of way is valid. Thus the road paying is both hard (by stone, asphalt or bricks) or both soft (sand, gravel).
At 7:10 you should have stopped and yielded to those pedestrians since they had a green light. Even if they're on the other side of the street. Legally speaking, you're only required to yield once they're on your side of the road, however it is very common practice here to stop whenever a pedestrian is anywhere near the crossing unless it is clearly divided by a center island, in which case you yield only once they approach the middle.
Roundabouts are currently an insane debate in our country because the law is unclear. Personally, I've never had any problems in them because I always enter and exit on the same lane, keeping in mind that a car in front of me on the other lane might turn, so I keep my speed low and do not go next to it even if it's on the other lane if it was in the roundabout before me. It's called defensive driving and if everyone were to follow it there wouldn't be anymore problems.
nobody needs to warn you about anything, is drivers job to read the driving law when driving in another country
Romania and Ukraine have the worst drivers ever.
Well generally speaking the driving laws in the US are very different to Europe, it's not only Romania. It goes usually the same with the road signs and their priority when the traffic lights work or not. By the way, at night traffic lights will turn blinking yellow in some towns, the only case where they won't work at all would be if an electrical grid failure happens. Trams always have priority, when you see them intersect with your road and they don't stop you have to give them way
you mentioned towards the end that it's all the same same same… including pedals, but here the majority of cars here have 3 pedals (stick shift). What I hate in US is the lack of "Give way" and a bunch of STOP signs where you have to keep track who was first, second, third and fourth (happened to me, I was 3rd).
At the 2:50 mark, the stop sign serves a purpose, when the lights are not working, either after midnight, or very early in the morning,like 3 or 4 in the morning you would get the flashing yellow or amber, meaning that the lights are out of order and then the stop sign takes effect.
Basically, in Romania, there's a hierarchy: cop signals, you follow whatever instructions they give you, afterwards you have the traffic lights, then you have the signs and if there are none of the above, apply the give way to your right rule.
Hope that makes sense.
Try driving in Bucharest or between cities without highways. Some people in Romania drive very aggressive / dangerous. They cut you off or overtake you. No rules. The best driver wins.
13:05 they're probably doing 80-90 to get the best fuel economy.
Also, I think it's naive to think that adding a minimum speed limit makes things safer. If you want to speed, that's why there are two lanes
@7:13 Under Romanian road traffic legislation, you are required to reduce your speed and, if necessary, stop to allow a bus or trolleybus to re-enter traffic when it is leaving a bus stop equipped with a pull-in bay (bus bay/refuge) and is signaling its intention to do so.
Yielding to large auto, trams etc, is an unwritten rule about priority. We don't have it explicitly in the driving code, but it's called "Priority by Weight/Oversize."
there are a few Right Turns on RED in Bucharest, just used them this summer
"If you can drive in America, you can drive it here."
Except when you don't know how to drive a stick. 😆
You are slightly spoiled on that side of the country.
Transylvania is somewhat richer and flatter so they have somewhat better roads, including more highways, better average cars, and on average, a better attitude.
If you cross the mountains, the roads are worse, the people are more frustrated with the roads, and the gap between "good" cars and bad cars is wider.
That is one of the reasons the average national accident rates are so high. E85 in Moldova and DN1 after A1 ends are known as "death roads."
Between Brasov and Sibiu, for example, it's not unusual to see a 30 year old Ford Transit doing 100 in the middle of a village, trying to overtake a Lamborghini.
Both with Bucharest plates.
Yellow lines are temporary, usually for construction or repairs. The paint is special and easy to remove after they are done. Often, they are on top of the permanent white lines, so if you see them, you drive according to the yellow lines.
With bikes and scooters, as you say, the problem is the speed at which they dart in front of you. I would not care if they rode at walking speed so I have time to see and estimate what they are doing.
Thre's one additional rule about trams: if there is no explicit sign or light, trams get priority by default when turning right, even if they come from your left.
Many people do not know that.
Fortunately, the cities which have trams are trying to not rely on that rule and signal the intersections accordingly.
But if a tram is going through the middle of a roundabout, you have to yield to allow it to exit.
The order is police>light>sign here, but you already figured that out.
On highways, you don't have to dip for two seconds to the first lane between every two trucks, but if the first lane is clear, do not sleep in the second.
Was you driving or your wife? 😮
"It's pretty much the same" and "who looks at the signs?" in the 1st minute from an American driving in Europe is actually scary 🙂 There are fundamental differences, glad that you explained throughout the video…