Mumbai is chaos, everywhere you look. But it’s a controlled chaos. There is no sense of order, but yet people stop at traffic lights. Vehicles of all types, including bikes, rickshaws, busses and cars all mingle and swerve on the same crowded streets. Add to that people attempting to cross the streets. It’s quite scary, yet beautiful to watch.
I’ll never drive in India – it’s just too chaotic for someone who’s used to (relative) order on the streets. Despite the chaos I observed, in my 2 week stay, I was surprised to observe that I didn’t see one accident. I suppose if there were an accident, it would be a fender bender, as you really can’t drive too fast on many of the roads. If there were a fender bender, most people probably just settle it right then and there, as opposed to waiting for a policeman to show up.
Good times, all in all. But I’ll stay in the passenger seat, thank you very much.
-Krishna
Oh man! That can seem like the worst feeling in the world!
Oh yeah… I’ve seen traffic in Mumbai and it’s not too terribly bad. Traffic here in Pune is a lot worse because most drivers learned to drive before any lanes were painted on the streets so they ignore them and the traffic signals probably operate less than 50% of the time, and even then many drivers ignore them. Between my apartment and office they’ve set the lights to flashing yellow during peak hours, which is the same as not having them at all (must have electricity to spare).
There are quite a few traffic fatalities, though… Where I used to work on the outskirts of Pune we had to cross the expressway, and the road on the other side was better paved than most Indian roads. Every couple of weeks the newspaper reported deaths in traffic accidents there. And lots of laborers who worked in the building came to work injured or died on the way while walking along there.
On one trip to Delhi in March a few years ago we passed a sign on a gov’t building that had changeable numbers and said “There have been 300 traffic fatalities this year. Drive safe.” (I forgot the exact number, but it was over 300, in March).