Traffic in India

The traffic in Delhi was like nothing else I've ever seen. There are traffic regulations but no-one seems to pay much attention to most of them, the exception being that most people do seem to stop at red lights. We did go straight through one at 3:45am on the way to the airport but the road was pretty quiet and the driver beeped the horn loudly in case anything else was coming so that was OK!

In the UK, people generally use their horn as a warning or sign of annoyance if someone else does something dangerous. In India, people generally use their horns when they are about to do something dangerous, are in the process of doing something dangerous, or just want to let other drivers know where they are in case someone else fails to notice them. The effect of all this is that everywhere you go you are constantly surrounded by beeping horns.

Some of the roads in Delhi have "No Horn" signs, but these are universally ignored. Many of the roads also have lane markings which are similarly ignored. People don't generally drive in lanes at all, they simply go wherever there's a gap, so a 2 lane road could have anything from 2 to 5 vehicles squeezed into it from left to right at any point and this constantly varies as the traffic ebbs and flows.

Overtaking maneuvres, particularly out on the country roads, can be pretty dangerous. There are a lot of slow vehicles, e.g. ox carts pulling loads of sugar cane, and it takes a long time to get anywhere so drivers get pretty impatient. Generally vehicles just pull out and hope nothing's coming, or if something is coming they pull out anyway and expect it to slow down or move to one side to make way! It's also fairly common to see vehicles driving on the wrong side of the road. This often happens where there's a central reservation and a driver needs to get somewhere a short distance away and can't easily get across the reservation to the other side. During our drive to Mussoorie, at one point the police decided to close our carriageway one car in front of us. Accordingly they diverted all traffic onto the opposite carriageway but there were no traffic cones like you'd expect in this country and both lanes of the opposite carriageway were still in use! The car in front of us was simply diverted into the second lane on the opposite side, with us following, and the vehicles currently using this lane just had to slow down and get out of our way!

Although all this sounds like (and is!) pretty chaotic, there are some saving graces. The main one is that traffic in India tends to be a lot slower than in the UK so when accidents do happen (which is pretty frequently) they tend to be less serious, although I've no doubt there are still a lot more serious traffic accidents in India than there are over here. Probably about two thirds of the vehicles we saw had obvious bumps and scrapes and a pretty high percentage looked like they'd been in multiple accidents. In the UK, when someone is in a crash they usually get the car fixed up again afterwards on the insurance but in India, no-one seems to bother - apart from maybe trying to straighten out the dent a bit with a hammer! I guess this is probably for financial reasons. Possibly also though, there seems little point in fixing a dent when the chances are you'll be getting more of them before too long anyway! While we were in India, 3 of our team were in an auto-rickshaw which got too close to another car and took off most of it's rear wheel arch facing. The rickshaw driver just kept going - he didn't even bother to stop!

In a strange sort of way, all this chaos is actually fairly chilled - once you get used to it. Since everyone drives like a lunatic anyway, most of the time no-one is particularly surprised or upset about it. In the UK people usually only beep when they're really angry, but in India they do it just to say, "Hi, I'm here - please don't squash me", or "Mind out - I'm about to get in your way". Once you realise this it's all a lot less nerve-wracking - although it's still fairly heavy on the ear drums, for the first few days at least! It's also all very practical. People aren't overly fussy about rules, they just get on with doing what they think they need to do in order to get where they're supposed to be going. In a strange sort of way it all works pretty well - except for the accidents of course!

The other scary and unusual thing about Indian driving is the amount of things and/or people that get crammed into or onto vehicles. We saw bicycles piled high with boxes - more than I would've ever thought it possible for a bicycle to carry. On 2 or 3 occasions I saw bicycles laden with 6 large butane gas cylinders - 2 strapped on each side and 2 on the back. I saw 5 people on one motorcycle - father, mother and 3 children, mother and girls all sitting side saddle. Only father had a crash helmet. Motorbikes often carry passengers - quite often more than one - and usually only the driver has a helmet. Dave saw 2 people on a motorbike carrying a large pane of glass, upright, sandwiched inbetween them! One sudden stop (very common in Delhi!) and there would be no pane of glass anymore and two motorcyclists showered with shards! Again this is all very practically motivated. I need to transport something (or someone) from A to B, so I make use of whatever I have available. If there's a risk involved, too bad - the job has to get done. This seems to reflect quite a lot of the Indian attitude towards life.

Apart from the chaos caused by too much traffic, another consequence is pollution. There is a constant haze around Delhi which doesn't block out the sun but is enough to stop you from getting much of a sun tan - although probably if you stood out in it for a long time without any sun cream on you'd eventually still get burned! This is apparently much better than it used to be. All public transport, including all the auto-rickshaws are now run on CNG - Compressed Natural Gas - which is much less polluting, and cheaper than petrol or diesel. It is lighter than air so disperses quickly, making it safer than conventional fuels in the event of a leak. It's main drawback seems to be that it requires more storage space than conventional fuels. For more details on CNG see here.

By the end of our time in Delhi we'd grown quite used to the noise and the chaos on Delhi roads. On returning home to Burley in Leeds, we were particularly struck by how quiet everything was! In fact it was more quiet than usual since most of the students were away for Easter, but all the same, there was hardly any traffic noise and no horns beeping anywhere! When I got home I lay on my bed for a while, listening to the silence ringing in my ears..