Traffic in India – part one
Traffic in India is insane, insanely hilarious, insanely annoying and insanely frustrating.
If you have not driven anything in your life, you will not fathom the deep insanity of Indian traffic. A non-driver sees traffic as a flow of assorted vehicles , either smooth and orderly, or abrupt and noisy, or engrossed in snare and chaos. To him or her, the snare and chaos will appear to be the steady-state of Indian traffic. However, only a driver will understand the true terror and lawlessness that engulfs Indian traffic twenty-four hours a day (yes even late at night!).
Even more amazing are the social norms about traffic held by drivers and non-drivers alike in India:
Drivers need to be smart and talented in the art of driving.
Any empty road surface is accessible to any vehicle on the road.
Complicity with all the traffic laws will endanger your life anyways, because others will be angry and destructive towards you.
Playing chicken is good, specially when you are plying a motorized vehicle!
Hit and run after any accident is not necessarily a criminal activity (well, it is, in every country of the world, including India – for even minor accidents – punishable by jail time, severe penalties, and suspension of license – yes even in India!)
Equally amazing are the beliefs about traffic shared by drivers and non-drivers alike:
Traffic is more orderly in North America and Western Europe, anywhere else in the world it is similar to Traffic in India, only a tad more or less crazy!
(Fact: I have been to countries like Kazakhstan in Central Asia, Thailand, Cambodia and Malaysia and Singapore in South East Asia, Dubai and Oman in the Middle East, and Japan and China and Hong Kong in the Far east, and believe me, traffic is not nearly as crazy as in India – not even close! Assuming traffic is the same in the entire Indian subcontinent, it is crazy on an elevated level in India and our neighbors)
Speed limits are only relevant for highways monitored by cameras only. If you own a motorcycle and firmly believe that you have a stupendous magnum penis, then you have the right to drive at any speed in small side streets, terrorizing pedestrians and other traffic as long as you use your horn frequently. Such beastly behavior will impress your male friends and bring forth quasi-orgasmic approval from all the females who happen to witness this spectacle.
Right of way? WTF is that? A legal term enabling senior citizens and young women to move around as they please without getting mugged or raped? A new brand of deodorant? A new dating app, perhaps?
Yield? What? Yield to what ? To whom? You mean to a VIP convoy? To a politician of the ruling party? To a Bollywood celebrity perhaps. Or, are you talking about yielding to your spouse’s romantic advances? Oh hell yeah, it is a good idea to yield to an Ambulance because it will prevent ill people from dying on the way to the hospital. Indians are slowly learning to yield occasionally to all kinds of emergency vehicles. Are there other traffic rules about “yield” ? You have to be freaking kidding me!
And a case study!!
Let’s now do a case study of a quintessential Indian driver. His name is Ashok Dutta, my close friend. I am thankful for his habit of not reading much of anything on the internet (or anywhere else – he is a talented tabla player) –so please don’t tell him about this blog!! The first time I got alarmed about him was actually in Toronto, Canada. He and I were walking around, not even driving, in downtown Toronto, just wandering about. In any downtown in North America, there are lots of crisscrossing streets and hence a traffic light every 50 meters or so. We were walking normally, until I saw Ashok getting excited.
“Let’s get this one, come on!” He said suddenly
“Get what?” I was clueless.
Turns out he was wanting me to walk faster so we can get step into the pedestrian crosswalk before the light changes. Every time we were stopping at an intersection, we would wait a maximum of 90 seconds or less before we crossed the street. So the entire route involved waiting for the light at crosswalks for a total about 900 seconds which is fifteen minutes – at the most. After he dragged me through the sidewalk a couple of times forcing me to power walk so we can “get this one”, I explained to him that we have nowhere to go , we have all the time on our hands, and there are no hot chicks waiting for us in the guesthouse where we were staying!
The second time was even more alarming! I was driving my rental car around on the expressway in Toronto, Ashok was in the passenger seat. There were large trucks on the rood as well. Several times when I was behind a truck, the following conversation would ensue:
A: Please get the truck.
Me: Overtake?
A: Yes, please.
Me: The speed limit is 65 miles an hour. Both the truck and myself are driving at 70 miles an hour. I have to speed up to about 80 miles an hour to overtake the truck quickly. Why do I need to do that?
A: so you can see the road better if you are not behind a huge truck!
Me: hmmm. The truck is not bothering me.
Then , back in 2017, when I started spending six whole months in India , I rode pillion on Ashok’s motorbike ! Oh the horror! The travesty!
He drives on the left side of the road only when there is no traffic. If the road is busy, he is driving somewhere on the right of the middle of the road because he is always overtaking (or planning to overtake) the car or truck or bus in front of him. So 80% of the time he is on the wrong side, on a collision course with the oncoming traffic and risking a sideswipe with whatever vehicle he is overtaking. Oh yes, sometimes overtaking a vehicle on the right is not possible, so he immediately overtakes on the left, risking collision with pedestrians, bicycles, motorized carts, three-wheelers etc. who do not expect him to come from behind (because they are on their side of the street, minding their own business)
When Ashok needs to actually take a right turn, the monster reveals himself – he just takes a right turn! – no signal, no waiting for the oncoming traffic, and he enters the road on the right side while driving on the right side (the illegal side), sometimes at a breakneck speed, honking his horn incessantly. I have seen him taking a right turn in front of three cars driving abreast, coming from the other side, along with two motor bikes. He cleared the last motor bike by about one foot!
When he is not overtaking, he is riding abreast with two or three other two-wheelers in a tight space, with inches between them and at a great risk of side-swiping and crashing.
Of course, two wheeler vehicles became popular in India because of their maneuverability on crowded streets and ability to weave through traffic. To illustrate this, Ashok took me to visit my lawyer’s house through a busy market street not wide enough for cars. He told me that going through the main road will take about one hour. Through the market, he rode merrily, inches from the veggie and fruit sellers sitting on the street, my feet dangling from his bike passing about six inches away from some fishmonger’s knives, sometimes six inches from another bike’s red hot exhaust. Horns were being blown by all the bikes present, terrorizing the housewives shopping , dogs were running in fright. On the one hand, I was wanting to shrink myself to a human of about one foot in size to escape serious injury, on the other hand I was mesmerized at his unbelievable driving skills, weaving, braking, honking and creating a mayhem on that narrow street full of people, but managing not to hit a single soul or a single piece of fruit.
“There” said Ashok when we arrived at our destination “we saved twenty minutes. You are OK, aren’t you?” I was so far from being OK that all I could manage was to nod my head and he took it as a sign of approval.
There is a basic lack of apprehension on the part of Indian drivers like Ashok, you get a blank stare , a sense of total disbelief when you ask some questions. Ashok takes a very small alley near his house to go home from our place, the alley is four feet wide, just enough for a full sized bike to fit in – it saves him about 25 seconds, He told me a few times “Take this great shortcut on your bicycle when you visit us, it will save you time’” After going through it the first time, I politely refused , telling him “I am not taking that alley. Do you know little children play there? Sometimes old people walk there as well”.
His response was a an incredulous “So?” meaning “why are you telling me this ? There is no chance in hell I am going to hit someone in the alley. I am Ashok, the veteran bike rider.” I did not tell him that there is a beautiful young lady that lives close to my house – one of her eyes is gone. When she was a little girl, she shot out into the empty street and a bike came out of nowhere and hit her, the corner handle pierced her eye. Of course the rider was not our great Ashok, so it is not relevant, is it?
Yes, I told him once, when he was with his wife, myself and another friend. His wife, who hesitates to ride pillion on his bike, asked me what sort of a driver he was.
“A good driver, but he violates 100% of the traffic laws 100% of the time” I replied, causing ripples of laughter all around. Next time though I was with Ashok alone, and I told him the same thing. I could see he was deeply hurt and seriously offended. With a wry grin he told me “ I never had an accident in forty years”
“That’s great”, I said “I am glad to hear that”.
(No Accident? You freaking kidding me? He has accidents everyday!! His arms and legs have lacerations and bruises all the time, his bike parts are being broken and replaced all the time – How the hell do you explain that? Of course he has not been hospitalized with major trauma yet – what a freaking miracle!!)
What is remarkable with Indian drivers is their amazing skills at balancing, weaving, anticipating, calculating and assorted other things that are needed for driving both cars and motorbikes. Oh, the drivers also seem to have three or four pairs of eyes also, because they can always see who is about to crash into them from behind or from the sides, or if there is enough room on the road surface for their vehicle to squeeze through, or if their rear tire is about six inches away from someone else’s tire or foot, so its OK to proceed normally!! If, on a scale of one to 100, drivers in USA are about 50 on average, drivers like Ashok are about 96 at their skill level!
Not all drivers are crazy like Ashok, there are 75% drivers that are equally or less crazy, and 35% more crazy than him. Well, that adds up to 110%. Because, at a given point the extra 10% “more crazy” drivers are writhing in pain in the hospitals, or comatose from head trauma, or going to the cremation ground with their grieving family members – at least they are off the streets, finally!
In the above rambling, I have actually under-reported Ashok’s driving habits. In the second part, I will describe my venture into riding a bicycle in Indian streets and my investigation into the causes for this unusual phenomenon of traffic in India.