Indian Roads Thread

[Gus]

Accidents expose lurking dangers on the Highways - The Hindu

the Salem-Ulunderpet NH, according to motorists, is laid with many flaws.

I have been on that road many times. It has several danger areas. There is a junction at one place, where the road is aligned to the opposite lane after the junction. If you are not careful, you will cross the junction and get into the opposite lane!!!

[nakul]

Nice sounding nonsense. Freedom does not include the freedom to put other people's lives in danger -- people are far more free in other parts of the world where there is discipline on the roads.

Driving dangerously on the roads does not come under the category of things that don't pose a problem for others. The accident statistics amply bear this out and it's obvious to anyone who's not on a justification trip for everything Indian.

Calling idiotic driving behavior "crowdsourced intelligence" does not somehow condone it.

Really, please see the video again before commenting.

Driving at 10 kmph on roads meandering through bazaars without traffic lights & road signs is not to be scoffed at. The so called rule followers simply close their eyes when in such situations. They don't have the wherewithal to handle such a situation.

It's amounts to their ability to adapt. You might not know have moved out of your ivory tower but I have lived with people who have spent all their lives driving on such roads. In the total absence of external help, the only way to guide yourself is to use your senses. Of course, being unAmerican will make it seem uncool to MUTUs and their ilk. We just need to call BBC to do what they did to the dabbawallas. Soon even Indian institutes like IIM will start inviting them for lectures on "traffic management." The media will fawn & pg 3 celebrities will travel in rickshaws to show how cool they are. (Like they currently use battery powered cars that make more energy to make). But there is a preconditon to all that, the gora should acknowledge it first.

[Abhijeet]

Yes, if driving at 10 kmph was the goal of building roads then things would be fine, and we would also not need motorized vehicles. Unfortunately, people do need to get between points further apart than a 10 kmph speed allows. Most people also do not drive at 10 kmph even on the narrowest of roads in India.

Again, before accusing others of living in an ivory tower, please take a look at the accident rates in India. If it were as easy as just "using your senses" we wouldn't have the daily litany of fatal crashes everywhere that the newspapers report.

[nakul]

Yes, if driving at 10 kmph was the goal of building roads then things would be fine, and we would also not need motorized vehicles. Unfortunately, people do need to get between points further apart than a 10 kmph speed allows. Most people also do not drive at 10 kmph even on the narrowest of roads in India.

Make India a country of autobahns. The people are not the problem. Its the infrastructure that molds the driving habits.

Again, before accusing others of living in an ivory tower, please take a look at the accident rates in India. If it were as easy as just "using your senses" we wouldn't have the daily litany of fatal crashes everywhere that the newspapers report.

Yes & we also don't see the reports that would have happened had they been road nerds. Its good to follow rules but there are situations where one must bend them. I have given the example of a bazaar without traffic signals / cops / lanes / boundaries. Pray, what do you expect people to do in such situations

If you think that accidents don't happen in America or elsewhere, we are better off without such people. If you need something to whine, please spend a few hours in a village or town where people / animals / vehicles share the same 6 m wide strip.

[Abhijeet]

Most of the accidents do not happen in bazaars but on higher speed roads where people still do not follow rules. Theo's video is of a typical Indian street, not an inner lane in a bazaar. Do you see most people driving at 10 kmph?

Do you think we should do away with higher speed roads entirely?

[nakul]

Most of the accidents do not happen in bazaars but on higher speed roads where people still do not follow rules. Theo's video is of a typical Indian street, not an inner lane in a bazaar. Do you see most people driving at 10 kmph?

Do you think we should do away with higher speed roads entirely?

Do you think changing the road will change driving habits instantly? The old habits will take time to die out. You can't expect an American driver to adapt to Indian roads in a day, do you? Why impose harsher conditions on SDREs?

[Abhijeet]

Because SDREs have had considerably longer than a day to adapt. This may come as news to the village where you've spent your life, but there have been highways and higher-than-10kmph roads in India for some time now.

[nakul]

Because SDREs have had considerably longer than a day to adapt. This may come as news to the village where you've spent your life, but there have been highways and higher-than-10kmph roads in India for some time now.

Please tell this villager more. I am most enlightened by your wanderings. Which city are you talking about? I have been to Mumbai & Delhi and they don't fit your criteria. Could someone enlighten this village boor?

On a serious note, I am asking you to get out of your ivory tower and go beyong Lutyen's Delhi or Marine Drive. How about Chandni Chowk or Karol Bagh? Even Byculla or Grant Rd in Mumbai will do. Thank god we are just restricitng ourselves to the biggest cities in India. What about the >50% of India who does not know what highways are. We need the white man and brown sahibs to teach him how to live in his own land.

[Gus]

Driving habits are a product of traffic conditions, Yes, but that by itself is not an excuse for what goes on in our roads - bullying by bigger vehicles and darting around by smaller vehicles.

[Theo_Fidel]

I agree with Nakul that Indians don't have a clue how to drive so they just make it up on the fly.... ...you know Juggad. I don't agree that this is a correct situation for India.

BTW when a bus runs over you at 10 kmph it is just as fatal.

One gets the feeling that all responsibility for each other and the rules have been abandoned as the drivers have this 'ellam Andavan thaan' (it is up to god) approach to driving.

[nandakumar]

Nice sounding nonsense. Freedom does not include the freedom to put other people's lives in danger -- people are far more free in other parts of the world where there is discipline on the roads.

Driving dangerously on the roads does not come under the category of things that don't pose a problem for others. The accident statistics amply bear this out and it's obvious to anyone who's not on a justification trip for everything Indian.

Calling idiotic driving behavior "crowdsourced intelligence" does not somehow condone it.

Really, please see the video again before commenting.

Driving at 10 kmph on roads meandering through bazaars without traffic lights & road signs is not to be scoffed at. The so called rule followers simply close their eyes when in such situations. They don't have the wherewithal to handle such a situation.

It's amounts to their ability to adapt. You might not know have moved out of your ivory tower but I have lived with people who have spent all their lives driving on such roads. In the total absence of external help, the only way to guide yourself is to use your senses. Of course, being unAmerican will make it seem uncool to MUTUs and their ilk. We just need to call BBC to do what they did to the dabbawallas. Soon even Indian institutes like IIM will start inviting them for lectures on "traffic management." The media will fawn & pg 3 celebrities will travel in rickshaws to show how cool they are. (Like they currently use battery powered cars that make more energy to make). But there is a preconditon to all that, the gora should acknowledge it first.

A friend of mine back from the US on a short trip was positively scandalised about the 'no rules' system on our roads. I told him on our roads Indians follow a 'dynamic pathway allocation' model!

[Theo_Fidel]

Actually that is a good point. Modern city engineering does believe that a little bit of chaos on the streets forces drivers to concentrate fully on the traffic and makes things a little safer and slower. To this end, things like Roundtana's and curb free streets have started making their appearance.

I do agree that that the chaos on our streets is function of society itself, our social system is complete chaos as well. I have a wedding invitation in front of me that invites me for a wedding that incredibly has no start time and no end time. The Wedding is from Dec 11-14. Can you imagine the chaos for the guests. A more complete social reform will be necessary before we can clean-up our streets. Those advocating challans and arrests and law-enforcement maybe barking up the wrong tree.

[saip]

I agree with you Theo. Recently I was in a town in AP and was trying to cross a busy street but just couldnt. The traffic was chaotic and no one was even slowing down leave alone stopping. Then I noticed something. Little school children no more than 7 or 8 years old were crossing the street nonchalantly. Obviously there is an order in the chaos which with my mind affected by the total order that I experienced in massa land for 30 years failed to grasp.

[Abhijeet]

Please tell this villager more. I am most enlightened by your wanderings. Which city are you talking about? I have been to Mumbai & Delhi and they don't fit your criteria. Could someone enlighten this village boor?

Please explain -- without handwaving about "Indian", "gora" etc -- which criteria they do not fit. There are many roads in Mumbai and Delhi that allow higher than 10 kmph speeds, and where "anything goes" is not a safe way to drive.

Yet again we get into explaining why things are the way they are -- something that's not a revelation to anyone. Yes, we all know that Indians are just now moving into cities from rural areas, they are unused to modern traffic speeds -- you are impressing no one with your astute explanations.

There is, however, a difference between understanding why things are the way they are, and accepting them as ok, even desirable -- a difference which you are perhaps failing to grasp.

[Bade]

Why should SDREs copy others? They are not soldiers with the jernails breathing down their necks to do or not to do. India has been a free society where a person had freedom to live his life without a church or mosque requesting compliance and order. You were free to do whatever you wanted as long as it did not pose a problem for others. The modern term would be crowd sourced intelligence. This reflects in modern society as well. They adjust to almost any situation in the world but the people with rule following soldierish mentality find it difficult to live in a free world. Interesting, no?

I will agree with you if India promptly shuts down NHAI and goes back to kutcha village roads. Let us decide then that is good enuf for freedom lovers. I can live with that too. At least it will be more safer, even if less efficient on fuel and time. We are like this onlee, no ? We can also be different from the rest of the idiotic copy cat world we want to do business with. Disband the army, why we can have villager mobs doing civil and national defense. Why have a carrier and a sub. It was all invented elsewhere to put down people's freedom.

[nakul]

Please tell this villager more. I am most enlightened by your wanderings. Which city are you talking about? I have been to Mumbai & Delhi and they don't fit your criteria. Could someone enlighten this village boor?

Please explain -- without handwaving about "Indian", "gora" etc -- which criteria they do not fit. There are many roads in Mumbai and Delhi that allow higher than 10 kmph speeds, and where "anything goes" is not a safe way to drive.

Yet again we get into explaining why things are the way they are -- something that's not a revelation to anyone. Yes, we all know that Indians are just now moving into cities from rural areas, they are unused to modern traffic speeds -- you are impressing no one with your astute explanations.

There is, however, a difference between understanding why things are the way they are, and accepting them as ok, even desirable -- a difference which you are perhaps failing to grasp.

I don't know where you are situated but it surely seems you don't know about India. The roads are straddled with shops on both sides with people & animals freely jaywalking. Can you just use copy paste of American system into the Indian situation? The rule abiders only work when everybody follows the rules and where rules exist. If you have ever been to a natural place, you would notice beings walking around each other without colliding. This is how nature works. The system you are trying to impose is artificial. To make an artificial system work, requires the designing of an ecosystem to help it thrive. We lack that ecosystem in India. Hence, our actions are closer to the natural inspired order that goras/MUTUs/brown sahibs fail to comprehend and dsimiss as chaos.

[nakul]

Why should SDREs copy others? They are not soldiers with the jernails breathing down their necks to do or not to do. India has been a free society where a person had freedom to live his life without a church or mosque requesting compliance and order. You were free to do whatever you wanted as long as it did not pose a problem for others. The modern term would be crowd sourced intelligence. This reflects in modern society as well. They adjust to almost any situation in the world but the people with rule following soldierish mentality find it difficult to live in a free world. Interesting, no?

I will agree with you if India promptly shuts down NHAI and goes back to kutcha village roads. Let us decide then that is good enuf for freedom lovers. I can live with that too. At least it will be more safer, even if less efficient on fuel and time. We are like this onlee, no ? We can also be different from the rest of the idiotic copy cat world we want to do business with. Disband the army, why we can have villager mobs doing civil and national defense. Why have a carrier and a sub. It was all invented elsewhere to put down people's freedom.

Nehru would have been proud of you. Your dream has been implemented by the Nehru Gandhi parivar. The result is in front of your eyes. We still vote for them. You must be a very ahppy man indeed.

[Theo_Fidel]

You are absolutely right Sai there are ways to 'play the game'.

But there is no order to the chaos. The children cross because they lack understanding and knowledge of all that can go wrong as they nonchalantly stroll across. As Abhijeet points out, our fatality rate makes this painfully clear. There is no miracle happening. About 120,000 die and about 600,000 are maimed on our streets each year because of these type of activities.

A massa trained driver/pedestrian has the following things flash through you mind that gives you pause to reflect that 'dying' just to cross a street is not worth it.

- Is not wise to challenge a 20 ton bus for right of the road. You will lose every encounter.
- A bus driver has numerous blind spots if he acts like he can't see you don't assume he can.
-Do not blindly step out in front of a moving bus. Even if you make it across every so often there will be a vehicle on the other side you can not see and that will be the end of you.

Truly in India ignorance is bliss.

[nakul]

You are absolutely right Sai there are ways to 'play the game'.

But there is no order to the chaos. The children cross because they lack understanding and knowledge of all that can go wrong as they nonchalantly stroll across. As Abhijeet points out, our fatality rate makes this painfully clear. There is no miracle happening. About 120,000 die and about 600,000 are maimed on our streets because of these type of activities.

A massa trained driver/pedestrian has the following things flash through you mind that gives you pause to reflect that 'dying' just to cross a street is not worth it.

- Is not wise to challenge a 20 ton bus for right of the road. You will lose every encounter.
- A bus driver has numerous blind spots if he acts like he can't see you don't assume he can.
-Do not blindly step out in front of a moving bus. Even if you make it across every so often there will be a vehicle on the other side you can not see and that will be the end of you.

Truly in India ignorance is bliss.

Its truly weird world out there. In most situations, the only way out is to challenge the bus. The other option is to never cross a road. Which one would a person choose?

[Bade]

It is very nice to use "fuzzy logic", "natural chaos", "organic growth" etc to justify things seen and accepted by non-mutu indians but the non-mutu rape class of India enjoy all the freedom to drive at any speed on any road at any time with the consequences faced by the non-rape classes on the streets.

First thing is to stop all vehicular traffic (only allow the thelas or rickshaws) from inner streets and bazaar corners. Not even Autos should be allowed, only pedestrians.

Major new roads or highways should not pass through towns like they do now. This will separate the fast moving vehicles.

[nakul]

It is very nice to use "fuzzy logic", "natural chaos", "organic growth" etc to justify things seen and accepted by non-mutu indians but the non-mutu rape class of India enjoy all the freedom to drive at any speed on any road at any time with the consequences faced by the non-rape classes on the streets.

First thing is to stop all vehicular traffic etc thelas or rickshaws from inner streets and bazaar corners. Not even Autos should be allowed, only pedestrians.

Major new roads or highways should not pass through towns like they do now. This will separate the fast moving vehicles.

We should be like China. Suppress our own people's freedom so that others' appreciate us

[Theo_Fidel]

I can tell you what I do with my kids.

Many times I have gotten into my car just to cross the street.

Other times, like at Chennai Marina, I walk to the nearest traffic congestion, light, etc, (there always is one) and cross where the traffic is hopelessly snarled up. Occasionally I will pick up both my kids and dart across the road even if there is no traffic. It is the Indian Nonchalance that gets folks killed IMO, not the actual crossing itself. Too casual. A healthy dose of fear would cut down our meat grinder rate. Long time back when I visited with my older kids we would have them wear bright neon vests. Odd but it was very effective. People even used to stop to gawk at the strange kids in yellow vests crossing.

[Bade]

Or we can kill our own citizens at will by mowing them down daily, to protect our freedom, whatever that means.

[Theo_Fidel]

First thing is to stop all vehicular traffic (only allow the thelas or rickshaws) from inner streets and bazaar corners. Not even Autos should be allowed, only pedestrians.
Major new roads or highways should not pass through towns like they do now. This will separate the fast moving vehicles.

I agree with this fully. It is the only way forward. Most of Chennai should become pedestrian only. Unfortunately with the chaotic/organic street planning only a modern dense metro system can settle this issue.

[nakul]

Or we can kill our own citizens at will by mowing them down daily, to protect our freedom, whatever that means.

I don't see people being mauled down. Perhaps other version of 10000000 poor children of dying in Yindia BS. For the kind of density we have, either we adopt the co operative model or ban all private vehicles. I know which is working right now.

[Bade]

Nakul, despite claims to be a villager I doubt if you regularly live in one, or even a small town. Cities at least have footpaths. I have seen foot paths even in dilapidated kolkata of yore. Small towns did not need one. Just the dirt sidewalk by the roads were good enough till the 90s and the onset of the car revolution in India. My dad could not cross the roads in his hometown after retirement, just to do the daily needs of shopping. That is when I bought a car. Yes, I am a proud mutu. What about all the old folks who cannot afford that themselves. How do they go about their lives ?

[nakul]

They are not paranoid. If 7 or 8 yo kids can cross the roads nonchalantly, what stops the older folk from doing so? I symapthise for the senior citizens but even you know that not every nook & corner cannot be covered with traffic lights. How do they manage in such situations? Most of the places I have been to cannot be covered with them. On the contrary, people here are more sympathetic than most realise. How many of them actually stop to let a pedestrian cross the road? With the absence of traffic signals / zebra crossings, drivers realise that people have no other option but to slow down or stop to allow others to use the road. This human element is usually ignored when discussin real life situations. Humans are not machines and adding complexities does not have the same effect on human beings. Ultimately, the best situation is when we look out for each other instead of leaving that job to a traffic constable.

[Viv S]

A more complete social reform will be necessary before we can clean-up our streets. Those advocating challans and arrests and law-enforcement maybe barking up the wrong tree.

Not necessarily. In the days before the Commonwealth Games in Delhi, the police starting enforcing traffic rules more strictly, and maybe it was so because this was a limited time affair, but the discipline on the streets did improve noticeably. Not only did it become safer but it was also faster on average. Especially among commercial vehicles (usually the worst offenders). Also, seat belts used to be an exotic appliance ten years ago, whereas today wearing a seatbelt has become a part of the average driver's routine in Delhi. It took many years and many enforcement drives to make it happen but the ritual was finally drilled in.

Given enough effort the streets could become a lot safer, even though its no substitute for better infrastructure. Greater traffic surveillance through CCTV cameras would be a good way to start. You could also introduce a degree of automation through image recognition software reducing the manpower costs.

[Bade]

If a large majority of Indians accept wearing seat belts then it is a sign that we do accept less freedom of the wanton kind for the cause of safety, and that there is real hope that finally we may conform to world standards. A few naysayers will always be there., though to me it looks like a case of ignorance in the general public being interpreted as a superior system evolved out of local necessities.

[nakul]

If a large majority of Indians accept wearing seat belts then it is a sign that we do accept less freedom of the wanton kind for the cause of safety, and that there is real hope that finally we may conform to world standards. A few naysayers will always be there., though to me it looks like a case of ignorance in the general public being interpreted as a superior system evolved out of local necessities.

How does wearing seat belts equate to less freedom? The fact that every car manufactured in India needs seat belts has a lot more to do with the situation than anything else. By the same yardstick, bike riders should all wear helmets since clearly a helmet is far more important than a seat belt.
SDRE solution: Buy a bike, get helmet free

[Bade]

No wearing seat belts is a western standard, designed to make you sit tight in one place. Ask any SDRE from your papa's generation. It is another mutu practice onlee.

No one has yet mentioned about google chacha's driver less car technology. The real beneficiary of that would be Indians both behind the wheels as well as on the road, in front of the wheels. Maybe it will also be deemed too foreign a practice to be allowed for village bumpkins.

It needs to be tested out for Indian conditions of road quality as well as driving etiquette. I see a great future for that in the Indian context.

[nachiket]

Many of the problems on Indian roads would be at least partially solved if every person who gets a license had to actually take a proper driving test like in other countries. Officially a driving test is necessary but that is rarely the case in practice. And when a driving test is taken it is so easy that you would have to work really hard to fail it. That is not the case in the US for example. Failing driving tests is pretty common. They have list of critical errors, which if you make them result in the examiner failing you on the spot. There is nothing like this in India. People need to be motivated to memorize all the rules and follow them while driving. Handing out driving licenses without even checking if the "driver" knows the difference between the clutch and the brake means that nobody bothers to actually inculcate the habit of following rules on the road.

[vivek_v]

Driving rashly in Indian roads has nothing do with not having a proper driving test. Most of the people who either speed or drive rashly or both , normally have many years of experience behind the wheel because only then he/she would have the control to get out of tough situations without denting the vehicle in Indian roads. People who just got license normally drive very carefully if not for anything , then at-least to reduce damage to the Vehicle.

As a matter of fact people who do follow all the driving etiquette while driving in US roads would be the first one to drop the same when driving in India roads. To have massa land like traffic discipline , one needs that kind of infrastructure and that kind of space in the first place. Without that it is pointless comparing massaland and India for traffic discipline. The only place where i saw anything close to India like roads was in Italy and yes they don't follow anything close to USA like road discipline and Italy is supposed to be a G7 country.

The main issue in India is mostly to do with the Poor quality of roads and the traffic density which in-turn causes everyone to use every nook and cranny to gain an advantage, jump signals when possible, drive on the wrong side .....etc to overcome to traffic density and gain an advantage.

Also, at the end of the day how many pedestrians in India even use a footover bridge or a subway or even a pedestrian crossing in the first place for that matter even if it available ? Take a look in the IT highway , the "most educated" crowd would the first one to jump across a divider even when there is a footover bridge available within a few meters. Education does not equals better road manners , at-least in India.

[nakul]

No wearing seat belts is a western standard, designed to make you sit tight in one place. Ask any SDRE from your papa's generation. It is another mutu practice onlee.

Even cars are a western invention. I agree 400% onlee

[Dileep]

It is simply the infrastructure not keeping up.

I live close to a main artery that connects the ITVty hub to the main city, and the highways. It is just 10M wide with lots of shops on either side. At commute hours, it carries bumper-to bumper traffic. There was proposals to build another road, but wherever they try to align it, the locals are objecting. Right now, the road carries more traffic than a 6 lane city road in Unkilland.

So, I avoid crossing it. The fish market is on the other side, so I go really really early to buy fish. After 8:00am, you can't cross it.

[Bade]

So, I avoid crossing it. The fish market is on the other side, so I go really really early to buy fish. After 8:00am, you can't cross it.

See another example of how "freedom" is actually being lost on Indian roads rather than to the contrary as is claimed.

[nakul]

We should ban cars so that the proletariat can regain their freedom

[Bade]

Ah, the imaginary punching boy for the elite rapes and their fantasies of indic uniqueness, as long as they themselves do not have to make any major sacrifices on their Burra-Sahib ways like walk, instead of drive to the local mall.

[nakul]

The indics really don't give too much priority to how they reach the mall since they can't afford to buy things from such elite places. Its the American returned or ABCDs that howl about the adjustments thatt they have to make and make sure to blame the indics for their own inability to cope up with the highly evolved indic solution

[Abhijeet]

I'm sure "Indics" do need to get from point A to point B, to the fish market if not the mall. Unlike your village, all of India is not a self-contained wonderland.

It's also the common people for whom your heart bleeds who die in the largest numbers from road accidents -- caused, again, mostly not by the elites, but by under-educated truck and bus drivers who lack courtesy and concern for their own common brethren.

It is most emphatically not the case that the only people who care about road safety are the elites, the MUTU, the ivory-tower dwellers, the US returnees, or the ABCDs. That's quite an impressive list of ad hominems you've thrown around there, but I'll leave that for the mods to sort out.

Every single day I read in the newspaper about yet another hit and run where a bus or truck driver runs over (take your pick) a schoolchild; a "pavement dweller"; a mother dropping her kids to school; a motorcyclist with his entire family riding with him; and other types of people that apparently do not exist in your village. All of these people, and their surviving families, care very much about road safety. Unfortunately, backward looking apologists such as yourself (thankfully, there are very few of them outside of Internet forums) think that the way things are on Indian roads is something to be defended and praised.

---------------

Again, I notice you haven't answered my question about why you think Mumbai and Delhi don't fit the criteria for places that need better driving standards.