Had been thinking about writing on this one for quite some time but kept putting it off. Yesterday the PM while in Bangalore to lay the foundation stone for the Metro Rail project, mentioned that people in this city seem to be very rude while driving, I thought time to pen my thoughts as well:-D
Road rage is something which most people in the big cities seem to be suffering from nowadays. Alas, I am no exception and have ocassionally shown signs of this rage! I particularly get irritated when the idiotic 2-wheeler guys change lanes without checking or when they are coming out of a side lane and just merge on to the main road without looking and breaking! I wonder how they can be so careless and put their lives, so to speak, in the hands of others??!! And when they do such idiotic things, I have found it very difficult to control my temper and not let loose a verbal volley :-P
People also get very impatient while waiting at signals and start honking the moment the signal turns green or at junctions where there are timers, when about 5 seconds are still left! Do they think the person in front wants to stay there? Or do they think he is deliberately waiting there to block you? Of course he has also seen the light turn green and is going to start moving! This is something I don't do, though I have been honked at when I keep waiting till the light turns green :-D Once I stopped a little abruptly since the light had just turned red and a taxi dude, probably thinking he is driving an F1 car, swerved around me and ended up grazing my car and scratching it! Surprisingly, I didnt get as angry as expected and after shouting at him a little bit moved on!!
Anyways, the reasons given for rash driving/road rage included the usual ones like people are leading very stressed out lives, they are always in a rush to reach somewhere, very little time and on and on. I think it has more to do with people, especially here, lacking basic civic sense and respect and understanding of others! Also, more importantly more than half of them can't really drive! It is more of a bhagwan bharose driving! A friend had once told me that the way to drive in India is to worry only about traffic ahead and on your right. I asked him what about the traffic on the left and hez like dude, you will be on someone else's right hand side ;-)
The other day I was going with a friend on his 2-wheeler and he did not know what brake lights were!! This I came to know after he had just managed to avoid hitting a Qualis!! And he had been riding his scooter for 6 months!!! I asked him how did you manage so long...and his classic reply...distance suddenly kam hote hua dikhta to he would brake hard and stop!!!!!!! Needless to say I was stunned on hearing this and then spent the next 5 minutes showing him when cars around us were braking and how to spot it!
An alarming statistic reported in today's paper was that blore registers the most number of 2-wheelers per month in the whole country! If this trend continues, then there will be utter mayhem out there and driving would really become a battle best not fought :-D
-uv.
1 comment:
I remember in Bombay if there is some space between 2 cars waiting at the signal lights, 2-wheelers would go between them to move ahead near the lights and in doing this they may scratch some cars, hit the bumpers, break the side mirrors, and they do this so that they can zoom as soon as the light turns green, and its very irritating especially when they come in front of you unaware and it becomes your job to protect those careless ba.... Also those taxiwallahs with 1 hand always out of the window and driving with the left hand (as if its a toy car) and will cut in front of you from the right and signalling with the hand out, that you should allow them and as if its their right to cut whenever, whereever they want to ....
my $0.02 for Kaka's road rage.
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