Because the whole point of the Internet is to complain loudly and gracelessly about everything that is wrong with the world, I shall now complain about the most exasperating drivers in India. They are the drivers who have greyed my hair. They are the drivers who add twenty minutes to my commute every day. They are the drivers who… fuck it, let’s just get on with the list. The five worst sorts of drivers in India, in ascending order of how much I hate them, are:
- Truck drivers on the Chennai-Bangalore expressway, who drive only in the fast lane between 40 and 50 Kmph. In contrast, Jat and Serd truckers on the Delhi-Amritsar highway are angels of driving ettiquette who stick to the middle lane and don’t swerve or zigzag. On the other hand, because the Chennai-Bangalore truckers are consistent about sticking to the fast lane, you can always overtake from the slow lane without any fear. So they stay at #5.
- Armed Forces Wives in the Willingdon Camp area, who go around an empty roundabout at 10 Kmph. Invariably they drive a white Maruti 800 with a regiment or squadron sticker on the rear windshield, where it probably blocks the rear view mirror’s field of view.
- All Forms of Traffic in Calcutta. Calcutta is a nightmare maelstrom of twenty five year old Ambassadors that smell fifty years old, kerosene powered autos, and pedestrians putting dharna or hartal. Fixing it is best accomplished by taking off and nuking it from orbit. It’s the only way.
- Indicabs in Bangalore: you know how I mentioned that the saving grace of the trucks on the Bangalore highway was that they were consistently in the fast lane and you could overtake from the left? Well, when it comes to cabs in Bangalore even that luxury isn’t there. The odds are good that the cab will be an underpowered dinky little Indicab going at 30 Kmph. The odds are also good that there won’t be just the single Indicab in the fast lane, but a phalanx of them forming a diagonal across all the lanes, so that even overtaking from the slow lane isn’t possible.
That brings us to the single most loathsome form of traffic, which is:
- Cargo Three Wheelers between ITO and the Haryana border.
Where do I begin to describe the awfulness of a cargo autorickshaw?
With the combination of the centred driver cab and the ginormous cargo space preventing the driver from seeing anything behind him?
With the engine creating so much noise that the driver can’t even hear you honking?
With the fact that the bloody things pick up where the Indicabs left of when it comes to driving in all lanes?
Or that they’re unreliable pieces of junk which break down in the middle of the road, forcing traffic to flow around them?
Whatever. I hate them. Hate them hate them hate them.
I await the day my commute drops from 80 Kilometres to 20 with breathless anticipation.
Posted by Aadisht