Driving in India-A Comprehensive Guide

[Adhiraj]

A funny article I came across a long time ago.I thought I might share it with the forum

DIVING IN INDIA-A Comprehensive Guide
By Coen Jukens

For the benefit of every Tom, Dick and Harry visiting India and daring to drive on Indian roads, I am offering a few hints for survival. They are applicable to every place in India except Bihar, where life outside a vehicle is only marginally safer.

Indian road rules broadly operate within the domain of karma where you do your best and leave the results to your insurance company.

The hints are as follows:

Do we drive on the left or right of the road? The answer is "both". Basically you start on the left of the road, unless it is occupied. In that case, go to the right, unless that is also occupied. Then proceed by occupying the next available gap, as in chess.

1. Just trust your instincts, ascertain the direction, and proceed. Adherence to road rules leads to much misery and occasional fatality.
2. Most drivers don't drive, but just aim their vehicles in the intended direction. Don't you get discouraged or underestimate yourself. Except for a belief in reincarnation, the other drivers are not in any better position.
3. Don't stop at pedestrian crossings just because some fool wants to cross the road. You may do so only if you enjoy being bumped in the back. Pedestrians have been strictly instructed to cross only when traffic is moving slowly or has come to a dead stop because some minister is in town. Still some idiot may try to wade across, but then, let us not talk ill of the dead.
4. Blowing your horn is not a sign of protest as in some countries. We horn to express joy, resentment, frustration, romance and bare lust (two brisk blasts) or just to mobilize a dozing cow in the middle of the bazaar.
5. Keep informative books in the glove compartment. You may read them during traffic jams, while awaiting the chief minister's motorcade, or waiting for the rain waters to recede when over-ground traffic meets underground drainage.
6. Night driving on Indian roads can be an exhilarating experience (for those with the mental makeup of Genghis Khan). In a way, it is like playing Russian roulette, because you do not know who amongst the drivers is loaded. What looks like premature dawn on the horizon turns out to be a truck attempting a speed record. On encountering it, just pull partly into the field adjoining the road until the phenomenon passes. Our roads do not have shoulders, but occasional boulders. Do not blink your lights expecting reciprocation. The only dim thing in the truck is the driver and the peg of illicit tharra (moonshine) he has had at the last stop; his total cerebral functions add up to little more than a naught. Truck drivers are the James Bonds of India and are licensed to kill. Often you may encounter a single powerful beam of light about six feet above the ground. This is not a super motorbike, but a truck approaching you with a single light on, usually the left one. It could be the right one, but never get too close to investigate. You may prove your point posthumously. Of course, all this occurs at night, on the trunk roads.

During the daytime, trucks are more visible, except that the drivers will never show any signal. (And you must watch for the absent signals; they are a greater threat.) Only, you will often observe that the cleaner that sits next to the driver will project his hand and wave hysterically. This is definitely not to be construed as a signal for a left turn. The waving is just an expression of physical relief on a hot day.

Occasionally you might see what looks like an UFO with blinking coloured lights and weird sounds emanating from within. This is an illuminated bus, full of happy pilgrims singing bhajans. These pilgrim buses go at breakneck speed, seeking contact with the Almighty, often meeting with success.

Unique to Indian traffic:

Auto Rickshaw (Baby Taxi,Samosa on wheels)

The result of a collision between a rickshaw and an automobile, this three-wheeled vehicle works on an external combustion engine that runs on a mixture of kerosene oil and creosote.Often these vehicles have music systems blaring colourful bhojpuri tunes however Snoop Dogg and Metallica have been heard as well. This triangular vehicle carries iron rods, gas cylinders or passengers three times its weight and dimension, at an unspecified fare.

After careful geometric calculations, children are folded and packed into these auto rickshaws until some children in the periphery are not in contact with the vehicle at all. Then their school bags are pushed into the microscopic gaps all round so those minor collisions with other vehicles on the road cause no permanent damage. Of course, the peripheral children are charged half the fare and also learn Newton's laws of motion en route to school. Auto-rickshaw drivers follow the road rules depicted in the film Ben Hur and are licensed to irritate.

Mopeds

The moped looks like an oil tin on wheels and makes noise like an electric shaver. It runs 30 miles on a teaspoon of petrol and travels at break-bottom speed. As the sides of the road are too rough for a ride, the moped drivers tend to drive in the middle of the road; they would rather drive under heavier vehicles instead of around them and are often "mopped" off the tarmac.

Leaning Tower of Passes

Most bus passengers are given free passes and during rush hours, there is absolute mayhem (hell). There are passengers hanging off other passengers, who in turn hang off the railings and the overloaded bus leans dangerously, defying laws of gravity but obeying laws of surface tension. As drivers get paid for overload (so many Rupees per kg of passenger), no questions are ever asked. Steer clear of these buses by a width of three passengers atleast.

One-way Street

These boards are put up by traffic people to add jest in their otherwise drab lives. Don't stick to the literal meaning and proceed in one direction. In metaphysical terms, it means that you cannot proceed in two directions at once. So drive as you like, in reverse throughout, if you are the fussy type.

Lest I sound hypercritical, I must add a positive point also.

Rash and fast driving in residential areas has been prevented by providing a "speed breaker"; two for each house. This mound, incidentally, covers the water and drainage pipes for that residence
and is left un-tarred for easy identification by the corporation authorities, should they want to recover the pipe for year-end accounting.

If, after all this, you still want to drive in India, have your lessons between 8 pm and 11 am - when the police have gone home. The citizen is then free to enjoy the 'FREEDOM OF SPEED' enshrined in our constitution.

Having said all this, isn't it true that the accident rate and related deaths are less in India compared to US or other countries ?

-Coen Jukens

 

[thevortex]

Absolutely, rip-roaringly hilarious post! This one made my day. One could hardly have put the whole experience better.

Someday one must also write about riding a motorbike in a traffic jam. This piece seems to be focused on cars.

 

[srramanujam]

Having said all this, isn't it true that the accident rate and related deaths are less in India compared to US or other countries ?

-Coen Jukens

Good fun reading, but India has one of the highest accident rates per vehicle (or) road length.

How about Italians?

There is a simple method of achieving the right state of mind for driving in Italy. Before you start your car for the first time, sit in the driver's seat, hold the steering wheel and think the following: I am the only driver on the road and mine is the only car. It may be hard to believe, especially after you have seen Rome during the first week of July or Milan during rush hour, but millions of Italian drivers believe it and so can you. An Italian driver's reaction to any encounter with another vehicle is, first, stunned disbelief and then outrage. You don't have a chance unless you can match this faith. It isn't enough to say you are the only driver, or to think it--you've got to believe it. Remember your car is THE CAR --all others are aberrations in the divine scheme.

THE LAW

In Italy, as elsewhere, there are laws about stop streets, maximum permissible speeds, which side of the street you can drive on and so forth. In Italy, however, these laws exist only as tests of character. and self-esteem. Stopping at a stop sign, for example, it's prima facia evidence that the driver is, if male, a cuckold or, if female, frigid and barren. Contrarily, driving through stop sign is proof not only that you are virile or fertile, but that you are a Person Of Consequence. This is why the Italian driver who gets a ticket goes red in the face, swears, wrings his hands and beats his forehead with his fists, and this is why people come out of nearby shops to snicker and point at him. It isn't the fine, which is ridiculously low, nor the inconvenience, for most offenses, you simply pay the cop and he gives you a receipt, but the implication that he is, after all, not quite important enough to drive the wrong way down a one-way street.

Remember, therefore: signs, laws and the commands of the traffic policeman are for the lowly and mean-spirited. Every Italian's dearest desire is to be an exception to the rule--any rule. The only place he can do it regularly is in his car.

THE CITY STREETS

The basic rule of driving in Italian cities is: force your car as far as it will go into any opening in the traffic. It is this rule which produces the famous Sicilian Four-Way Deadlock. Sharp study suggests that the Deadlock, Sicilian or Degenerate, can be broken if any one of the cars backs up. That brings us to another important point about Italian city driving: you can't back up. You can't back up because there is another car right behind you. If you could back up, and did, you would become an object of ridicule, for backing up breaks the basic driving rule and suggests a want of style.

The impossibility of backing up accounts for some of the difficulty you will have in parking. Aside from the fact that there isn't anywhere to park, you will find that when you try to parallel park by stopping just beyond the vacant space and backing into it, you can't because that fellow is still right behind you, blowing his horn impatiently. You point at the parking space, make gestures indicating that you on want to park. He blows his horn. You can give up and drive on, or you can get out and go back and try to get him to let you park. This you do by shouting Personal Abuse into the window of his car. One of three things will happen: he may stare sullenly straight ahead and keep on blowing his horn (if this happens, you're whipped, for no foreigner can out sulk an Italian driver); he may shout Personal Abuse back at you; he may, especially in Southern cities like Naples and Palermo where honor is all important, get out of his car and kill you, subsequently pleading delitto d'onore (crime of honor) which automatically wins in Southern Italian courts.

The parking problem created by the backing up problem creates the Right Lane Horror. At no time, in an Italian city, should you drive in the right lane. One reason is that Italians usually drive head first into parking spaces. Thus, every third or fourth parked car has its tail end sticking out into the traffic, making the right lane a narrow, winding lane. Unfortunately, the center lane has its hazard: the right lane drivers swerving in and out of the center lane as they steer around the sterns of half-parked and double-parked cars. (Double parked cars run one a block north of Rome and two a block South of Rome). Italians double park only in four lane streets; in six lane streets they triple park. Right lane driving is further complicated by the Italian style of entering from a side street by driving halfway into the first lane of traffic and then looking.

The way to deal with Lane Swervers and Cross Creepers is to blow your horn and accelerate around them. If you make a careful in line stop when your lane is invaded, you not only expose your social and sexual inadequacies but you may never get moving again, since you also mark yourself as a weakling whom anyone can challenge with impunity. While performing these dangerous gyrations, it is imperative to blow your horn. The more risky the maneuver, the more imperatively you must hoot, for all Italian drivers accept the axiom that anything you do while blowing your horn is sacred. (Horn blowing, incidentally, except in cases of serious danger, is against the law in every Italian city. I mention this because you would never know it otherwise).

The thing to remember is that one way streets in Italy are not one way. To begin with, a driver who has a block or less to go realizes at once that when they put up the sign they were not thinking of cases like his. He drives it the wrong way, going full throttle to get it over with quickly to prove that he really is in a terrible hurry. More important, however, Italian one way street always have a contro-senso lane; that is, a lane for going the wrong way. It is reserved for taxis and buses and, indeed, is always full of taxis and buses, producing the Two Way One Way Street, which, in turn, produces law suits, pedestrian fatalities and hysterical foreign drivers.

The distinctive feature of Italian cities ls the piazza - a wide space entered by as many as eight streets--in which a Berini fountain is hidden by parked cars. Italian traffic commissioners have sensibly ordained circular traffic for most of the piazzas, but the traffic circle, with its minuet- like formality of movement is, to an Italian driver, just so much exhilarating open space. You do not go around an Italian Traffic Circle, you go across it, at high speed, taking the shortest path from your point of entrance to your intended exit, while sounding your horn.

All Italian city driving requires (and soon produces) familiarity with the Funnel Effect. Especially in those cities that preserve medieval architecture in the downtown section, which means all Italian cities, you will find that four lane streets usually, after four or five blocks, becomes two lane and then one lane streets. Since most Italian cities are force-fed with automobiles by an excellent turnpike system, this produces the Funnel Effect and the Reverse Funnel Effect.

At first glance it may appear that the Funnel Effect is more dangerous and unnerving than the Reverse Funnel Effect. This is not correct. True, the unwary motorist entering a Funnel may get trapped against one side or the other and have to stay there until traffic slacks off around one or two o'clock in the morning, but you can usually abuse your way out of the trap. It is the Reverse Funnel which produces what my insurance company keeps referring to as "death or dismemberment." Imagine the effect of bottling a number of prideful and excitable Italian drivers in a narrow street for a half a mile or more and then suddenly release them. It's like dumping out a stack of white rats. As each car emerges, it tries at once to pass the car ahead of it and, if possible, two or three more. The car ahead is passing the car ahead of it, and on. If Italian cars were even roughly of the same power, this would simply produce wild acceleration, but the cars range from 500 cubic centimeter midgets up through Formula 1 racing cars, and the first hundred yards of the Reverse Funnel, before the shake down, produces a maelstrom of screaming engines, spinning tires, careening springs and blaring horns.

ON THE HIGHWAY

Italian roads, just like Italian streets, change their character unexpectedly. It not unusual to be driving on a six lane modern asphalt highway, then to round a curve and find that you are suddenly driving on a two lane sunken road of mud with the original Roman paving stones sticking up here and there. Most roads, however, are something in between these extremes.

The paramount feature of Italian highway driving is il sorpasso. The word sorpassare means both "to pass with an automobile" and "to surpass or excel." To sorpassare someone is to excel him socially, morally, sexually and politically. By the same token, to be sorpassato is to lose status, dignity and reputation. Thus, it is not where you arrive that counts, but what (or whom) you pass on the way. The procedure is to floor your accelerator and leave it there until you come up on something you can pass. If il sorpasse is not immediately possible, settle in its wake at a distance of six or eight inches and blow your horn until such time as you can pass. Passing becomes possible, in the Italian theory, whenever there is not actually a car to your immediate left.

When an Italian driver sees the car ahead of him on the highway slow up or stop, he knows there can be but two causes. The driver ahead has died at the wheel, or else he has suddenly and mysteriously become a Person of No Consequence, which is roughly the same thing as a fate which, in Italy, hangs over every head. He, therefore, accelerates at once and passes at full speed. If the driver ahead has, in fact, stopped for a yawning spasm, the passer is done for, but more often the driver has merely stopped for a railroad crossing gate. The same thing, naturally, is happening on the other side of the gate, and the result is the Cross Double Cross or Railroad Impasse.

The instant the gates go up, all four drivers obey the Law of Occupation of Empty Space and the four cars meet in the middle of the tracks, followed closely by the cars which are tailgating them. In the Four Handed Personal Abuse which ensues, the drivers of the two right lane cars usually team up against the drivers of the two left lane cars, but this is by no means a rule. Sometimes the three in the more expensive cars team up against the one in the cheapest car and sometimes all four fall upon the crossing guard.

In Italy you will see bigger trucks than you have ever seen in your life- huge, eight-axle, double-semis with cabs seating four abreast. There are no special speed limits for trucks in Italy. As if the very sight of these things was not terrifying enough, the drivers often paint mottos across their cabs, just above the windshield, usually religious. It is nerve shattering to meet one of these monsters coming down a hill at fifty miles an hour on a narrow mountain road, but panic looms lf you see "God is Driving" written on the cab, while "Heart of Jesus, Help me" does bear thinking about.

THE PEDESTRIAN

It is gauche to be a pedestrian in Italy. It is in bad taste: a pedestrian is a Person of No Consequence - The Italian pedestrian feels ashamed and does everything he can do to avoid acting like a pedestrian. To cross the street on the crosswalk, for instance, would be to admit he is a pedestrian. To cross the street, he crosses in the middle of the block, strolling slowly through the traffic. He is trying to make it clear that he is not a pedestrian at all, but a driver who has momentarily alighted from his car. If you treat him like a pedestrian, thus drawing attention to his shame, he will be furious. Do not look directly at him. Do not drive around him. Above all, do not stop for him. If he challenges you to drive within four inches of his toes, drive within four inches of his toes, as if he were not there. Of course, lf you drive on his toes he will shout Personal Abuse and call a cop.

THE SCOOTER PLAGUE

To get some idea of the Italian Scooter Plague, imagine all the chinks between cars filled with hurtling motor scooters, each sounding its tinny horn, racing its motor and emitting its small cloud of hydro- carbons. I used to think that nothing could be worse than the Italian Scooter Plague, but I was wrong. As young Italians get more money in their pockets, the Scooter Plague has given way to the Motorcycle Menace which is louder, faster, smokier and altogether more surpassing.

 

[soundsgreat]

Hi,

Absolutely, rip-roaringly hilarious post! This one made my day. One could hardly have put the whole experience better.

Someday one must also write about riding a motorbike in a traffic jam. This piece seems to be focused on cars.
Reply With Quote

You've said alright :lol: !! Its very very intriguing and interesting at the same time hyeah: !!

On a more serious note, Although its aimed at comedy (Am guessing here ) but the subject is bit dicey,coz if this is read by an individual living aboard and has never been to India,He may take it seriously and contemplate or take it literally !!! So these kinda of stuff may give wrong signals and impressions !


Anyways it was fun reading and enjoyed every bit thoroughly :lol: !!!

Regards.

 

[sridhar-v]

In my experience exploring India by car is an absolute mind blowing experience.

Plan well, use the Eicher map & also state level maps and try and get off the highways as quickly as possible.

Small taluka roads & state highways are a verible joy of scenery, changing food and very lonely stretches at times. Have been driving all over the South. Will now start for the north.

In 2008 we did a 9 day trip from Pune to costal Karnataka to interior karnataka to kerala border & back. Used mainly side roads, identified from the map, for most of the time & asked locals for guidance when doubtful.
Where else will you see a bamboo forest interspersed with trees having flowers of the most striking colour of magenta. Or the thrill of sprinting up to madekeri in pitch darkness hearing waterfalls all around and just judging which side is the gorge. Or driving for miles along the Saurashtra cost without a single vehicle crossing you- only sound of the waves.

Contrary to common perception the Indian Long distance truckers are extremely courteous and majority of them will notice u coming up behind & give proper signals & side. A thank-u wave of the hand above my roof is always greeted with a horn "ur welcome" hoot. it is only the local sand & bricks trucks that are a pain in the rear.

Am planning to do 2 long trips every year. Hope to get some time to start a blog for this.

 

[suri]

Good fun reading, but India has one of the highest accident rates per vehicle (or) road length.

How about Italians?

There is a simple method of achieving the right state of mind for driving in Italy. Before you start your car for the first time, sit in the driver's seat, hold the steering wheel and think the following: I am the only driver on the road and mine is the only car. It may be hard to believe, especially after you have seen Rome during the first week of July or Milan during rush hour, but millions of Italian drivers believe it and so can you. An Italian driver's reaction to any encounter with another vehicle is, first, stunned disbelief and then outrage. You don't have a chance unless you can match this faith. It isn't enough to say you are the only driver, or to think it--you've got to believe it. Remember your car is THE CAR --all others are aberrations in the divine scheme.

THE LAW

In Italy, as elsewhere, there are laws about stop streets, maximum permissible speeds, which side of the street you can drive on and so forth. In Italy, however, these laws exist only as tests of character. and self-esteem. Stopping at a stop sign, for example, it's prima facia evidence that the driver is, if male, a cuckold or, if female, frigid and barren. Contrarily, driving through stop sign is proof not only that you are virile or fertile, but that you are a Person Of Consequence. This is why the Italian driver who gets a ticket goes red in the face, swears, wrings his hands and beats his forehead with his fists, and this is why people come out of nearby shops to snicker and point at him. It isn't the fine, which is ridiculously low, nor the inconvenience, for most offenses, you simply pay the cop and he gives you a receipt, but the implication that he is, after all, not quite important enough to drive the wrong way down a one-way street.

Remember, therefore: signs, laws and the commands of the traffic policeman are for the lowly and mean-spirited. Every Italian's dearest desire is to be an exception to the rule--any rule. The only place he can do it regularly is in his car.

THE CITY STREETS

The basic rule of driving in Italian cities is: force your car as far as it will go into any opening in the traffic. It is this rule which produces the famous Sicilian Four-Way Deadlock. Sharp study suggests that the Deadlock, Sicilian or Degenerate, can be broken if any one of the cars backs up. That brings us to another important point about Italian city driving: you can't back up. You can't back up because there is another car right behind you. If you could back up, and did, you would become an object of ridicule, for backing up breaks the basic driving rule and suggests a want of style.

The impossibility of backing up accounts for some of the difficulty you will have in parking. Aside from the fact that there isn't anywhere to park, you will find that when you try to parallel park by stopping just beyond the vacant space and backing into it, you can't because that fellow is still right behind you, blowing his horn impatiently. You point at the parking space, make gestures indicating that you on want to park. He blows his horn. You can give up and drive on, or you can get out and go back and try to get him to let you park. This you do by shouting Personal Abuse into the window of his car. One of three things will happen: he may stare sullenly straight ahead and keep on blowing his horn (if this happens, you're whipped, for no foreigner can out sulk an Italian driver); he may shout Personal Abuse back at you; he may, especially in Southern cities like Naples and Palermo where honor is all important, get out of his car and kill you, subsequently pleading delitto d'onore (crime of honor) which automatically wins in Southern Italian courts.

The parking problem created by the backing up problem creates the Right Lane Horror. At no time, in an Italian city, should you drive in the right lane. One reason is that Italians usually drive head first into parking spaces. Thus, every third or fourth parked car has its tail end sticking out into the traffic, making the right lane a narrow, winding lane. Unfortunately, the center lane has its hazard: the right lane drivers swerving in and out of the center lane as they steer around the sterns of half-parked and double-parked cars. (Double parked cars run one a block north of Rome and two a block South of Rome). Italians double park only in four lane streets; in six lane streets they triple park. Right lane driving is further complicated by the Italian style of entering from a side street by driving halfway into the first lane of traffic and then looking.

The way to deal with Lane Swervers and Cross Creepers is to blow your horn and accelerate around them. If you make a careful in line stop when your lane is invaded, you not only expose your social and sexual inadequacies but you may never get moving again, since you also mark yourself as a weakling whom anyone can challenge with impunity. While performing these dangerous gyrations, it is imperative to blow your horn. The more risky the maneuver, the more imperatively you must hoot, for all Italian drivers accept the axiom that anything you do while blowing your horn is sacred. (Horn blowing, incidentally, except in cases of serious danger, is against the law in every Italian city. I mention this because you would never know it otherwise).

The thing to remember is that one way streets in Italy are not one way. To begin with, a driver who has a block or less to go realizes at once that when they put up the sign they were not thinking of cases like his. He drives it the wrong way, going full throttle to get it over with quickly to prove that he really is in a terrible hurry. More important, however, Italian one way street always have a contro-senso lane; that is, a lane for going the wrong way. It is reserved for taxis and buses and, indeed, is always full of taxis and buses, producing the Two Way One Way Street, which, in turn, produces law suits, pedestrian fatalities and hysterical foreign drivers.

The distinctive feature of Italian cities ls the piazza - a wide space entered by as many as eight streets--in which a Berini fountain is hidden by parked cars. Italian traffic commissioners have sensibly ordained circular traffic for most of the piazzas, but the traffic circle, with its minuet- like formality of movement is, to an Italian driver, just so much exhilarating open space. You do not go around an Italian Traffic Circle, you go across it, at high speed, taking the shortest path from your point of entrance to your intended exit, while sounding your horn.

All Italian city driving requires (and soon produces) familiarity with the Funnel Effect. Especially in those cities that preserve medieval architecture in the downtown section, which means all Italian cities, you will find that four lane streets usually, after four or five blocks, becomes two lane and then one lane streets. Since most Italian cities are force-fed with automobiles by an excellent turnpike system, this produces the Funnel Effect and the Reverse Funnel Effect.

At first glance it may appear that the Funnel Effect is more dangerous and unnerving than the Reverse Funnel Effect. This is not correct. True, the unwary motorist entering a Funnel may get trapped against one side or the other and have to stay there until traffic slacks off around one or two o'clock in the morning, but you can usually abuse your way out of the trap. It is the Reverse Funnel which produces what my insurance company keeps referring to as "death or dismemberment." Imagine the effect of bottling a number of prideful and excitable Italian drivers in a narrow street for a half a mile or more and then suddenly release them. It's like dumping out a stack of white rats. As each car emerges, it tries at once to pass the car ahead of it and, if possible, two or three more. The car ahead is passing the car ahead of it, and on. If Italian cars were even roughly of the same power, this would simply produce wild acceleration, but the cars range from 500 cubic centimeter midgets up through Formula 1 racing cars, and the first hundred yards of the Reverse Funnel, before the shake down, produces a maelstrom of screaming engines, spinning tires, careening springs and blaring horns.

ON THE HIGHWAY

Italian roads, just like Italian streets, change their character unexpectedly. It not unusual to be driving on a six lane modern asphalt highway, then to round a curve and find that you are suddenly driving on a two lane sunken road of mud with the original Roman paving stones sticking up here and there. Most roads, however, are something in between these extremes.

The paramount feature of Italian highway driving is il sorpasso. The word sorpassare means both "to pass with an automobile" and "to surpass or excel." To sorpassare someone is to excel him socially, morally, sexually and politically. By the same token, to be sorpassato is to lose status, dignity and reputation. Thus, it is not where you arrive that counts, but what (or whom) you pass on the way. The procedure is to floor your accelerator and leave it there until you come up on something you can pass. If il sorpasse is not immediately possible, settle in its wake at a distance of six or eight inches and blow your horn until such time as you can pass. Passing becomes possible, in the Italian theory, whenever there is not actually a car to your immediate left.

When an Italian driver sees the car ahead of him on the highway slow up or stop, he knows there can be but two causes. The driver ahead has died at the wheel, or else he has suddenly and mysteriously become a Person of No Consequence, which is roughly the same thing as a fate which, in Italy, hangs over every head. He, therefore, accelerates at once and passes at full speed. If the driver ahead has, in fact, stopped for a yawning spasm, the passer is done for, but more often the driver has merely stopped for a railroad crossing gate. The same thing, naturally, is happening on the other side of the gate, and the result is the Cross Double Cross or Railroad Impasse.

The instant the gates go up, all four drivers obey the Law of Occupation of Empty Space and the four cars meet in the middle of the tracks, followed closely by the cars which are tailgating them. In the Four Handed Personal Abuse which ensues, the drivers of the two right lane cars usually team up against the drivers of the two left lane cars, but this is by no means a rule. Sometimes the three in the more expensive cars team up against the one in the cheapest car and sometimes all four fall upon the crossing guard.

In Italy you will see bigger trucks than you have ever seen in your life- huge, eight-axle, double-semis with cabs seating four abreast. There are no special speed limits for trucks in Italy. As if the very sight of these things was not terrifying enough, the drivers often paint mottos across their cabs, just above the windshield, usually religious. It is nerve shattering to meet one of these monsters coming down a hill at fifty miles an hour on a narrow mountain road, but panic looms lf you see "God is Driving" written on the cab, while "Heart of Jesus, Help me" does bear thinking about.

THE PEDESTRIAN

It is gauche to be a pedestrian in Italy. It is in bad taste: a pedestrian is a Person of No Consequence - The Italian pedestrian feels ashamed and does everything he can do to avoid acting like a pedestrian. To cross the street on the crosswalk, for instance, would be to admit he is a pedestrian. To cross the street, he crosses in the middle of the block, strolling slowly through the traffic. He is trying to make it clear that he is not a pedestrian at all, but a driver who has momentarily alighted from his car. If you treat him like a pedestrian, thus drawing attention to his shame, he will be furious. Do not look directly at him. Do not drive around him. Above all, do not stop for him. If he challenges you to drive within four inches of his toes, drive within four inches of his toes, as if he were not there. Of course, lf you drive on his toes he will shout Personal Abuse and call a cop.

THE SCOOTER PLAGUE

To get some idea of the Italian Scooter Plague, imagine all the chinks between cars filled with hurtling motor scooters, each sounding its tinny horn, racing its motor and emitting its small cloud of hydro- carbons. I used to think that nothing could be worse than the Italian Scooter Plague, but I was wrong. As young Italians get more money in their pockets, the Scooter Plague has given way to the Motorcycle Menace which is louder, faster, smokier and altogether more surpassing.

hi srramanujam
aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhahhhhhaaahhahahahahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaHAHAHAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

NOW why do i relate to that so much???

regds

 

[thevortex]

Ramanujam - you have 'sorpassared' the earlier one with that little essay!

Intricately experienced and innovatively described, it is a joy to read through.

One small thing though - amazingly this too is entirely applicable to India. Only one exception - when you get caught killing somebody in a road rage, you dont even go to court. Matters are dealt with right on the road with the traffic constable. Not a laughing matter, I know. But that is how it goes.

On the driving experience matter, I suppose we could do the same writeup and change some of the terms and still make it count for an experience with New York downtown complete with its mad cabs and impatient drivers.

And did I mention - it was delightfully written!

 

[srramanujam]

Oops, just picked it off the net.


Coming back to the India, two experiences count among the most memorable for me.

1. In Kerala, the long distance buses are an absolute terror. They drive at break neck speed (the Govt ones especially), on highways. In any case, there is nothing to separate a town and a village in Kerala. It is one continuous stretch of greenery, kids crossing. When two buses cross each other in the opposite direction, there is absolutely just enough space for the wind to pass through. At 80kmph each direction, you live each moment in those buses really long.

2. In Ahmedabad - The two wheeler traffic is an absolute delight to watch. Before deciding where to go, Gujjus just start the two wheeler. Once they reach the middle of the road, they would stop, look around, and promptly set off in whatever direction. It could be right, left, U Turn, criss cross. Lanes and dividers are just a point of reference.


Crossing over to the other end of the spectrum, the motorcycle traffic in Hanoi is an absolute delight. The whole city has only a couple of traffic lights, but probably three million mobikes. They all drive at about 30-40kmph. No one stops at an intersection. At any point of time, twenty mobikes would cross in all four directions, just weaving their way through, without stopping. To be seen to be believed and relished.

 

[KonfuSed]

ROFL ROFL. Oh Man, these articles are just awesome. Laugh riot to say the least. Read the first article before(and even at re-reading it was laugh riot) but the refresher on the Italian was also no slouch. Infact most of them can be related to us too, they are so similar to what happens in Indian roads.
And is there still anyone who doubt that an Italian shouldn't rule India ;-) ? We are same culturally, mentally etc. ;-)