My name is Steve Remy. As the owner of Travel Rent-A-Car I’m looking forward to welcoming you to St Maarten. By providing well maintained vehicles at great rates and service with personal attention, I feel that Travel Rent-A-Car will be a big part of your relaxing, stress free Caribbean Vacation. I penned down some driving tips to help you to safely navigate the island’s roads – some of the rules are different from countries like the US:
Drivers are courteous on the island: whenever you have to pull out of a tight spot into traffic, someone will let you in. Whenever there is a traffic jam at an intersection, traffic will still move, because drivers cooperate. Be part of this comfortable driving culture and make room for other drivers, even if it’s not their right of way.
St. Maarten/St. Martin follows European laws and signage. Most importantly: traffic coming from the right has the right-of-way! Because this is the ‘default’ rule, there are usually no street signs on intersections. Only if right-of-way is regulated with signs does this default rule not apply. Drivers on the French side stick to this system much more strictly and assume you know.
There are many “sleeping policeman” or speed bumps on the road and they are not always marked clearly. Unless you don’t mind hitting your head against the ceiling of your car (and damaging the suspension), it is wise to navigate them cautiously, especially when 3 or 4 people are in the car (some of the speed bumps are too high and a car’s muffler might get caught on a heavily loaded vehicle).
One more little advice on roundabouts: Watch for pedestrians crossing the road. They have right of way!!! and may cause a sudden stop of the car in front of you exiting the roundabout.