Driving in India

What an experience. My observations:

1. In the US, when people stop at a stop sign to make a turn, they look the direction of oncoming traffic and evaluate whether their merge into traffic will cause someone to have to slow down or divert from their current course. In the same situation in India, the driver evaluates whether turning into traffic will cause a certain collision or not. The driver thinks about whether vehicles approaching him have enough time to get out of the way.
2. Occasionally you will see a white line painted down the center of a highway. This line has no significance to any driver in India. It is common to have 4 vehicles + an auto-rickshaw and a motorcycle all next to each other on a two lane highway.
3. Driving in the lanes of oncoming traffic is common. Just last night my driver drove for 30 seconds in the far right lane of oncoming traffic. Not just 1 lane over - two!
4. Honking in US means "what the hell are you doing?!?". Honking in India generally means "Hi, I'm here"

My first reaction to driving in India was that this was complete chaos. There's a strange order though. Everyone is making sure they don't hit each other. Traffic is like a river. Jump in and go with the flow.

Comments

[http://driving-india.blogspot.com]

Almost 10% of the global road traffic accidents occur in India. Much of the world wide web is full of sarcasm & mocking of the indisciplined driving on Indian roads. Unfortunately in since 60 years since independence the authorities have failed to publish a National Highway code. Licences are given to anyone who can demonstrate an ability to use the clutch-accelerator, consequently the motoer driving schools teach just that and no more. Concepts such as - blindspots, principle of MSM, the tyre & tarmac rule, 2 second gap and most improtantly giving way are not known to the average Indian driver.

This site http://driving-india.blogspot.com/ has been created with the purpose of providing driver education and training to all Indian road users. It is by far the most comprehensive website providing training in defensive driving. Learning simple road habits can make our roads safe and also free up congestion caused by traffic chaos.

At present 17 driver education videos aimed at changing the driving culture on Indian roads are available. The video are unique in that the footage is real life action from streets of London. We have copied the Western habits: Replaced the dhoti with denim, high rise buildings for Indian cottages, burgers and coke instead of Indian breads and perhaps sugarcane juice. Surely we can copy the Western ways of travelling too.

To watch the videos, interested readers may visit: http://driving-india.blogspot.com/

The videos cover the following topics:

Video 1: Covers the concept of Blind spots
Video 2: Introduces the principle of Mirrors, Signal and Manoeuvre
Video 3: At red lights, stop behind the stop line
Video 4: At red lights there are no free left turns
Video 5: The Zebra belongs to pedestrians
Video 6: Tyres and Tarmac (rather than bumper to bumper)
Video 7: Merging with the Main road
Video 8: Leaving The Main Road
Video 9: Never Cut Corners
Video 10: Show Courtesy on roads
Video 11: 5 Rules that help deal with Roundabouts
Video 12: Speed limits, stopping distances, tailgating & 2 seconds rule
Video 13: Lane discipline and overtaking
Video 14: Low beam or high beam?
Video 15: Parallel (reverse parking) made easy
Video 16: Give the cyclist the respect of a car
Video 17: Dealing with in-car condensation

Many thanks