If you have never been to Costa Rica, there are several survival rules to move here, one of them, and probably the most important one to know that the streets and highways are extremely dangerous due to several, and I mean several holes. For some reason in Costa Rica, the maintenance of the streets is very low or sometimes I even think non-existent, and driving has become a hassle, specially in the downtown area of San Jose. Costa Rica has an entity: Ministerio de Obras Publicas y Transportes (MOPT) who is supposed to take care of the roads all over the country and watch for careless drivers as they are also what we know as the highway patrol.
Costa Rica roads are definitely not made for the amount of traffic found everyday on streets; just yesterday a 72 year old man went through hell when driving towards Mall San Pedro in San Jose and the street just disappeared below his car, apparently the issue began with the strong rains of the past few weeks that debilitated the sewer and caused the street to collapse. In Costa Rica, roads are definitely only safe for 4×4 cars and until the Government realizes that patches are not good enough and built proper streets drivers in Costa Rica are doomed to these dangerous situations.
Traveling throughout Costa Rica is actually a lot safer, since highways are a lot less neglected that main roads. Also it appears that sewer problems in that specific area in San Jose are very common: a few years ago there was a huge hole in the middle of a road in San Pedro, Costa Rica people even called it the “hellhole”, but it was fixed a few months ago. Hopefully this was just random accident and people from the Municipalidad de San Jose will push the MOPT into getting a real damage control plan for the area.
