Monday, February 15, 2010

The shallow angle approach

Hanging out late at the office means that I miss the train home. Sometimes my friend loans me his bicycle (which is embarrassingly small for me) and I bike home in the middle of the night. This generally requires me bike back. This morning I came in during the 9:00 AM hour. STUPID MOVE. That really was a stupid move on my part. At that hour of the morning the traffic was so heavy that I basically had to walk the bicycle all the way back to my institute.

I did notice a couple of interesting things that I hadn't understood before about why traffic is so horrendous. I know already that the volume is too much. There are too many people, and too few rules. Might makes right. Everyone wants to get to his own destination first and forget everyone else. So some examples of this today:

A lady on a scooter had fallen on the main bridge I have to cross. I stopped and went into the middle of the street amidst the traffic to basically put my hand in front of the cars and motorcycles approaching en mass. There were two other men who came to help her pick up her scooter. I was frightened really for this woman's life because the traffic is so relentless. I could see that the next vehicle behind her was a bus and after the bus were hundreds of motorcycles and scooters honking and yelling because they couldn't see the hold up. They raced by on one side of the bus to get around, nearly everyone of them hitting this poor lady. I'm sure she got nudged in the first place and that's why her scooter went down. ARGH! I wanted to punch about 50 people. Another funny incident is that when I was finally able to get into the bike lane there was a student riding along my same path. He was pedaling with his heels! I hate that so much. Anyway, I'm riding a bike that is too heavy and too short to go quickly, but you know what, I put a lot of power into pedaling with my CALVES! So I passed this kid who was pedaling all funny, and he sees this, so races past me. I get up to a comfortable speed and am catching back up with him, then he sees that I'm catching up as he turns around and starts really pedaling fast. he turns around several times and each time makes sure that I won't catch him. I was happy enough that he rode on, because his pedalin was really getting on my nerves! But somehow it seems normal that no one in India likes being passed. I MUST GET TO WHERE I'M GOING BEFORE YOU GET TO WHERE I'M GOING!!!

So on that note... The shallow angle approach is what I believe to be one of the key ingredients to all this mass chaos and disorder. I was riding by a gas station (or petrol station in the local parlance) and parked in front was a little yellow mosquito taxi (autorickshaw) and behind that were people emerging from the station. I had to stop and wait for several to pass, because they were ALL coming out inches from the rickshaw! They were coming along the shortest possible path they could toward to be in traffic. So they approached from this very shallow angle. All of a sudden they are on the extreme leftmost (driving on the left) edge of traffic. I notice this when I hire taxis to the airport and such. They driver gets to a road entrance, and doesn't bother with the right angle turn, just sort of merges into traffic as he sees fit. It's that crazy entrance into traffic. I think they all believe that as long as they just come into traffic they won't have to wait even one more second. I hadn't noticed this in lines for things (queues) such as buying train tickets, but now that I think back on it, this happens all the time. Some jackass comes from the extreme left or right end and just slides laterally into your spot. ARGH!

In case it has not been made explicitly clear in this post... I DO NOT approve of the shallow angle approach to driving in India. I really believe it causes more chaos and confusion and generally slows down traffic rather than speeds it up. Perhaps Chennai should enforce some serious tolls on it's bridges and cause ways. That might alleviate SOME things. Traffic tickets I'm sure won't mean anything. Well, all that said, while I don't approve of this hectic driving or (non)technique, it is truly interesting to witness it in large crowds.

1 comment:

  1. dear lord, you crazy...be careful. sounds absolutely chaotic!!!

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