The traffic rule I derived from years of study of Moscow traffic, namely “nothing exists behind you” was also applicable to the traffic patterns I found in India. I visited India after already having spent several years adjusting to Moscow but the sheer diversity and number of people on the roads in India took me aback. As in Moscow, studying the traffic was highly entertaining and great for people watching, which luckily I could do as we had a driver there as well (thank goodness!).
City traffic
One of the reasons why being in traffic in India was such a great adventure was due to the wide variety of vehicles that shared the roads. Large trucks, cars, small three wheeled taxi vehicles reminiscent of rickshaws but with engines, motor scooters with families of four precariously perched on them, bicycles and the occasional horse or ox drawn cart were all represented. Sometimes a wandering cow was in the mix as well. Because all of the different modes of transport travel occurs at different speeds accompanied by a constant jockeying for position that, to those of us used to a more orderly existence, verges on chaos. If there are lines on the road that define lanes I am pretty sure no one notices them. Forget the idea of lanes, it is more of a mob experience. I found myself closing my eyes and wincing at what constantly looked like near misses as the smaller vehicles weaved in an out of the larger ones or the larger ones moved up on and past fragile looking three wheelers or a way too exposed family on a scooter. The over-crowded scooters never ceased to draw my horrified gaze. The father would be driving with a small child sitting in front of him with the mother sitting side saddle in her sari behind him holding another small child on her lap. Maybe some of them had helmets and maybe they did not. It looked very precarious.
But again, as I watched and tried to figure out how it all managed to work I saw the “there is nothing behind you” guideline evident. It appeared that drivers continued on their way reacting to only what was in front of them. If you were coming up from behind to pass, a friendly little toot of the horn gave warning that you were there and about to change the landscape for the person in front as you slid by. Somehow it all worked. Watching it all I realized if I ever wanted to drive and survive in that environment I was going to have to shed my law-abiding rule-oriented US mindset.
Maximum Packing Factor at work
Traffic lights in India were a delight. Lanes, again, were completely ignored. Instead the operating theme was “maximum packing factor”. The large vehicles came to a stop, more or less in some semblance of order. The smaller vehicles, the scooters, the three wheeled vehicles, the bicycles, all weaved their way through the larger vehicles filling in all of the space between them, trying to get as close to the front of the line as possible. By the time the light turned green there were not a few neat lines of well defined traffic lanes ready to cross the intersection, but a mob more reminiscent of the start of a road race where upon the “on your mark, get set, go” everyone surges out at their top speed, whatever that may be. The race to be the first happened over and over again at these stop lights. The pedestrians and the ox and horse carts stayed towards the side of the road and generally stayed out of the chaos even though they did influence, indirectly, the traffic.
On the highway from Delhi headed out to visit the Taj Mahal it was really fun to look at the vehicles going by. Here, finally, people tended to drive in lanes and traffic was a bit more predictable. But the means of transport, again, was all over the map. Big trucks, decorated with flags and religious icons, cars of all shapes and sizes, buses with people sitting on the roof clinging tightly against the wind buffet, three wheeled rickshaws, the ever present over-crowded scooters, bicycles, ox carts, camel carts, even pedestrians were all present. Although it was a highway and stretched through rural and rather desolate areas, the highway and surrounding fields were crowded with people (that pretty much defines what I saw of India–there were noticeably lots of people everywhere).
Two sights remain with me from that highway trip. We passed one of the three wheeled rickshaws which was so stuffed with people it looked like they were competing for a spot in the Guinness book of world records for a nod to how many people you could fit in a vehicle. I counted about 15 men stuffed into, on, and around the passenger area in which three is normally a tight fit. People were sitting on the roof, standing on and hanging off of the running board, sitting up with the driver and generally filling every square inch of space. The other remarkable sight that has stayed with me was of a truck driving down the road. This was no ordinary truck. It was a half built semi-type truck and basically consisted of only the undercarriage and the engine. There was a driver sitting in the one seat and apparently he was taking the skeleton of the truck down the road somewhere to the next factory where the rest of the outfitting would occur. It looked really weird seeing this half built truck driving down the road, almost like something out of the movie “The Terminator”. But what made it really unusual (as if it were not already unusual enough) was the fact that there were several passengers sitting on the undercarriage in various areas, hitching a ride on the truck. They were precariously perched over the wheels, for example, where there was enough structure to grab onto to maintain a steady stable seat. I can honestly say I have never seen anything like that before. People perched on the crowded roof of a bus, surrounded by luggage, getting wind-blown could not compare. I loved watching traffic in India!