Traffic

I guess the traffic in India is legendary.  If you want to drive here with discipline, you can forget about driving. Indians are always in a rush to get somewhere and invariably late.  I have been watching the speed and you are lucky to drive at 25km per hour in the city traffic.  Here, might is right and the two-wheelers will cut through every little nook and cranny.

I have actually seen a stop sign but I don't think that any of the drivers will recognize what that means.  Forget about stop sign, they do not seem to know about the traffic lights either.  Nobody seems to even slow down at the red light but then, the traffic hardly moves faster than 25km per hour.

An interesting thing is that people boast about driving fast, and by fast, they mean 150km per hour; that is over 90mph. In a Suzuki 800cc car, nevertheless.  When I ask where, they say that the highways between the cities are amazing and you can drive as fast as you want.  As someone who drives a true sports car in the US, I am amazed that these cars are not even outfitted with tires rated for the speed and yet, they seem to be doing alright.

I must mention a good experience I had yesterday.  I was waiting to cross the road yesterday and a Sikh gentleman in full police uniform stopped his motorcycle to let me pass.  I wish I had saluted him for being so kind-hearted though no one else seemed to care around him.

There are too many vehicles on the road and not enough training for the drivers.  I don't think that these guys realize that they will save both time and money if they drive in a disciplined manner. But then, the gene that encodes discipline mutated in the Indian DNA somewhere during the evolution.

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