(Road) Sense and Sensibility

I have always wondered on the lack of road discipline and manners in India. Across the board, wherever you go it is the same. People not respecting the right of way of others (it seems the bigger you are the right of way you have is greater) and honking are the most obvious cases. In many cases the honking starts as soon as the signal turns to green, sometimes it is to just to indicate intent (to overtake) and on many occasions just for the heck of it : as if to announce one’s presence on the road. (Mind you this is not the best way to say Hi !) And at night, the worst bit is the lack of manners in dipping the headlights when there is an on-coming vehicle. Rather, when there is a vehicle approaching from the opposite side, people tend to change over from dim to bright!

It is one thing to blame the lack of roads, the state of the existing roads and the traffic. But then in many others countries, the traffic is equally bad if not worse. Also, by honking/not respecting the right of way / by going for the ‘bright’ headlights, one does not tend to get to the destination faster / safer.

What brought this to mind was a recent trip I made in a bus in the English countryside (travelling from an offsite conference back to the hotel) – the roads were winding, very dark (not lit by street lights) and to top it all off – narrow and wet. The bus driver dimmed the lights whenever he saw the hint of light from the opposite side. It was a smooth ride in spite of us travelling in a largish vehicle on a narrow, unlit, winding wet road.

We excel in absorbing the bad bits of western culture while we ought to learn from their better practices like in this case.

One aspect of improving the situation is the policing bit –make fines prohibitively high and perform more effective policing. Even assuming this is performed efficiently (which itself is a very difficult proposition) it is only half the battle won. The other bigger battle is that as a society we need to change our mindset to road manners. All the communication campaigns and road safety weeks have only made minimal impact.

How we can resolve the bigger issue is something that I cannot prescribe now. Ideas anyone?