Rules of the Road

As you may or may not know, people drive on the left side of the road here in India. This is one of the many rich cultural influences that England left behind after its long colonial period.
A long time ago, I was told that the reason people drove on the left in England came from the days of knights and jousting. And that in the United States, we drove on the right side of the road because of the way we rode horses out west. Supposedly you wanted to keep your six shooter on the other side of the horse when you rode up to greet someone else on a horse and thereby would always pass them on the right. Now, since it's been a while since I jousted or went to one of those "Medieval Times, All You Can Eat with Your Hands" shows, the only way I can try to remember whether you jousted on the left or the right is to think about that movie, "A Knight's Tale." But every time I think about that movie I can't help getting teary eyed thinking about poor Heath Ledger overdosing on prescription drugs. And every time I start thinking about overdosing on prescription drugs, I can't help but think about poor old Anna Nicole Smith. So needless to say, I've stopped thinking about whether you joist from the right or the left.
Now even though India drives on the same side of the road as England, that's about where the similarities in driving styles end. One of the big differences is rules. India has no driving rules. Or if they do, no one has any idea what they are or just doesn't care. And when I say rules I'm referring to road signs, lines on the roads and basic physics. I'm now a few days short of three months here and though I've tried, I really have, I cannot find any sort of code of driving rules that anyone follows.
First off, remember that there are over a billion people here in India and that India is about half the size of the US. (There are about 300 million people in the US. Yes, million:US, billion:India). That means there is a very large amount of people on a very little amount of road. Also, in the US we are under the assumption that when we start driving down the road, especially the highway, the only other thing on the road is going to be other cars and trucks. Not so in India. In India you've got to content with auto rickshaws (three wheeled motorcycles carrying up to 3 families at a time), motorcycles (carrying up to one whole family at a time), scooters, peddle rickshaws, human pulled rickshaws, oxen pulling carts, cattle, bicycles, children playing, people walking, people going to the toilet, rubble, sleeping dogs and garbage. Lots and lots of garbage. And the occasional elephant. All with very different speed and maneuverability limitations.
Something that is supposed to happen out on the road is that when a vehicle is driving along and wants to pass another vehicle, the vehicle in the rear is supposed to beep its horn and the vehicle in the front is supposed to pull over enough to let the rear vehicle by. The horn beeping happens, quite frequently, but that's about it. In fact everyone who is driving, literally drives and pretty much constantly blows the horn. Of course, if everyone is blowing their horn, that means that everyone is either going to pull over or assume it's for someone else and keep going. The latter is what occurs. It is just a giant jam of vehicles all beeping their horns. Even the rickshaws have the squeezy horns on them that the guy pulling it blows.
It is rare, that you will see any kind of traffic sign. Even at intersections there will be no stop signs. There are lines down the middle of the road but many times the road itself is barely bigger than one lane so the line doesn't mean anything. It is only in the major cities that you will find these traffic control devices. Also, there are no sidewalks. And if there are sidewalks, they are so blocked with overflow from the shop fronts or parked cars or construction rubble or human excrement that you can't walk down them anyways, so everyone walks down the road, even the highways.
But the biggest problem on the roads here is that everyone feels that they have the right of way. This means that if you are driving and you come upon someone in front of you that is going slower than you are, you feel that you have the right of way not only to the lane you are in, but to the oncoming lane you are going to pass this person in, even if there is oncoming traffic. In turn, the guy you are about to pass feels that because he was there first, he's got the right of way and is not going to give you an extra inch, so you are going to have to go all the way into the oncoming traffic lane. And, of course, the people in the oncoming traffic lane, who see you passing feel that you have entered into their lane where they have the right of way and are not going to slow down and will at times actually speed up. All the time, everyone is beeping their horns, so it's alright. Now going further on with this privilege of right of way, is that if you are trying to pull from a driveway or side street into oncoming traffic, you should feel that you have the right of way because you can pull in front of that person before they get to you no matter how fast they are going. And if down the road, some one tries to pull in front of you, you should still have the right of way because you're horn is louder.
During one bus trip I took here, I was sitting right behind the driver and had a perfect view out the big front windshield. At one point, the bus I was on was trying to pass the car that was in front of us. As we came completely into the oncoming traffic lane, I could see that there was a line of oncoming traffic and it had a big dump truck at the front of it. There was no way the old diesel bus we were in would make it in time to get back onto our side and the oncoming dump truck couldn't move over because there were no shoulders along the road. Just as the oncoming dump truck hit his brakes, the next three cars behind him decided that they all had the right of way and decided to pass him, which brought them straight into the line of the car we were trying to pass. We basically had two multi-vehicle head on collisions about to happen. Fortunately, everyone slammed on their brakes just in time to avoid an accident. But, of course, they all yelled at each other out the window, insisting that each had the right of way. And the funny thing is, they all really believed that they did.
Even when stuck in bumper to bumper traffic, people can't help but feel they have the right of way over everyone else. In a few areas they have built divided 4 lane highways so if traffic in one direction gets backed up and people start trying to pass each other crazily, they won't screw up traffic in the other direction. Wrong. I was on one of these 4 lane divided highways where the other direction of traffic became completely backed up. So in response, drivers, and I mean dozens of them, crossed over the median to drive, in the wrong direction, down our lanes. After a few near misses, everyone eventually come to a halt in both directions. We now had two traffic jams going in the same direction. We were stuck there for over an hour.
The best way I can think to describe it is that, imagine in the United States you gave every teenage boy a car, motorcycle or scooter, told them to drive as fast as they wanted, wherever they wanted, gave them no driving instructions whatsoever, and then sat back to see how it all panned out. That's driving in India.
This may sound like a really harsh criticism of the driving here, but come to find out, it's not far from the truth. I have spoken to three different Indians in three different parts of the country and they all told me the same thing. They said that while there is a formal written and driving test that you are supposed to pass in order to get a driver's license in India, no one does because it's much easier to just pay off the person at the driving test. Even the Indian author Tarun Chopra in his book "The Holy Cow and Other Indian Stories" tells of trying to do the right thing and take the driving test. He not only failed the written part miserably but didn't have a car when it came time to take the driving portion of the test. The woman at the testing office told him not to worry, took his fee and gave him his license! If this isn't shocking enough for you, keep in mind that in order to rent a car in the United States and freely drive the roads with the rest of us, all you have to do is present a driver's license from your home country and off you go. The credit card is the only thing they check on.
Another issue here, I've been told by an Indian Lawyer who I met in Kolkata, is that police officers can't write tickets or make arrests. They can only write summonses to court and that the amount of bureaucratic paperwork involved isn't worth the trouble. Not to mention that if you are an officer who grew up being told that this type of driving is normal you probably wouldn't see anything wrong with it. I've seen officers directing traffic in cities, I've never seen one patrolling on the roads.
I mentioned before that I went to see the Golden Temple in Amritsar and then the ceremony out at the Pakistani border. Well, in order to get to the border, I bought a ticket for a seat in a shared jeep. It was a medium sized SUV with a front bench seat for 2 people, a back bench seat for 3 people and 2 little jump seats in the luggage area that were good for a couple of kids. That would be if you were taking the family out on a picnic. If you were in India trying to squeeze every rupee out of these trips you would load in 12 adults plus the driver. This would be 4 in the front seat, four in the back seat and four people jammed into the cargo area. I was fortunate enough to get the cargo area. This car was definitely loaded beyond the weight capacity it was designed for and you could feel it in the shocks going over bumps and the way it swerved going around corners. The trip to the border is about 15 minutes of city driving and then 45 minutes of a straight shot on a two lane road. Because it's a big tourist attraction, the road to get there is full of traffic. Apparently our driver was worried that they would start the show without us because he drove like a bat out of hell to get there. At times I would estimate we were going between 70-80 miles per hour, all the while passing cars with out slowing down a bit or paying attention to how big the truck in the oncoming lane was. And why should he, he had the right of way and a good horn to boot. When we would fly up to a car he wanted to pass, he would wait until the last minute then jerk the wheel into the other lane. The suspension had trouble handling the weight and most of the time the car went not only into the oncoming lane but all the way over onto the dirt shoulder. This process would be repeated when he re-entered the correct lane. To add to this excitement, the driver was engaged in a conversation with the other people in the front seat and was often using his hands to talk and turning his head completely to the side to address the guy at the far other end of the seat. On two occasions he answered his mobile phone and talked on it for a while. The people in the front and back seats were all Indians and jammed in the back, like Bengali chickens waiting for the axe, were me, a French couple and an older Indian man who was fast asleep on my shoulder. None of the Indians seemed to mind, but when I looked over at the French couple their eyes were as big as crepes. I must admit that I hadn't been that close to crashing in a car since having to drive in Boston rush hour traffic with my brother Jim.
I recently changed my mind about using a peddle rickshaw driver instead of taking a cab or auto rickshaw. The peddle rickshaw is the 3 wheeled bicycle where you sit on a small bench over the back wheels and the driver peddles the front bicycle part. If you remembered I had issues about using human powered transportation to get me around. I decided that the guy who peddles the rickshaw needs work just like the cabbies do but unlike the motorized vehicles, he's not polluting the air. Also, when I arrive in a city and don't know where my guesthouse is, the rickshaw driver does. So I hired one recently to get to my guesthouse. As we worked our way through the usual city traffic, we came upon a street that had a barricade and a policeman at it. The street was restricted to any entry of cars, so we were OK to go through. As we entered the road, an SUV came quickly up along side of us to try and cut us off. I heard the policeman yell at the SUV, but could see that the driver clearly didn't care and sped up to pass the officer. This time the SUV hit the side of the rickshaw, not badly, but enough to make us all stop. As the officer reprimanded the SUV driver, we pulled our rickshaw free and headed down the road. A few seconds later, the driver of my rickshaw, who I could see was still upset, turned to me and said in an angry voice, "Crazy country. Many people. No rules."