Driving to Work: Excitement or Menace

As I drive to work every day, the chaos is evident.  There is no time to stop and think even on the sides of the road since I am moving along with several other means of transport on a packed roadway.  In India, driving is all about space and judgment.  You first find a space on the road ahead, which you need.  You judge if the cycles, rickshaws, autos, trucks, bikes, pedestrians, and the other cars can beat you to it.  If you decide it’s all yours, then you just have to go for it.  The faster you keep finding those spaces, the quicker you keep moving!

In some places, where they are building a bridge forever, you find that the traffic is bottlenecked.  This also happens when a portion of the road is dug or a tree falls on the road, thereby preventing access to the full road. Sometimes even without the road blockades, when vehicles come in to an intersection from different roads and head out in opposite ways, you will find honking drivers positioned in a variety of angles cutting in to each other where those who manage to scare the adjacent vehicle secure their way forward.  As someone told me once, it is amazing that two cars are a millimetre apart but do not touch each other.  Driving in India often gives you the feeling of “so near, yet so far” when there is a foot between you and the next car but someone still manages to stick a portion of his vehicle in to assert his authority over that space.  Space is the most precious resource as far as the Indian driving scene is concerned and no one willing to give it up.  If somebody does, then he is not in a hurry, is a patient individual, or is beginning to test his own patience.

Drivers who are interested in turning right, through busy oncoming traffic, usually have to go forward inch by inch until cars from the opposite direction stop going around their vehicle.  Although you are doing your turn judiciously and using your indicator, people will still give you a stare to let you know explicitly that you have encroached on their space.  Often in smaller lanes, cars are parked on either side leaving a single lane for traffic.  This situation requires you to wait until most or all of the oncoming traffic passes.  If you don’t have the patience to do so, then you might just invite a traffic jam.  You also have to watch out for rickshaw riders, who have gotten in to the habit of sticking out a hand to indicate their intention to make a turn or park.  Once the indication is made, there is no regard usually for what the traffic thinks about that hand signal.    

As cities grow and metro traffic coverage is unable to expand proportionally, an increasing number of people are attracted to the luxury of owning and driving a car.  With poor infrastructure development and maintenance, and chaotic driving conditions, it could become really difficult for people to commute in a timely manner during peak traffic hours.  If things continue this way, vehicle pooling and public transport will become a rule, not a choice we get to make.