Occidental driving

If one had all the roads to onself, like VVIPs do when they are forced to travel by road, driving will either be sheer bore or sheer fun depending on your personality type.  Real life driving for commoners like us involves coordination with umpteen fellow users.  And hence merely knowing the rules is not enough; you must also know what goes on in the minds of fellow users and how do they normally react to exceptions.  On your home turf you know all the user types and all the possible reactions and the knowledge has been internalized.  But this advantage is lost in a place where you are a stranger.  An example will illustrate it.

At places where a lane joins a main thoroughfare and there are no signals, the traffic on the thoroughfare has the right of way and those about to enter it from the lane are supposed to wait for a safe entry.  I was driving on such a thoroughfare in the city of Cupertino when I saw a vehicle from a lane on the right approaching at not too slow a speed.  Now I had an apprehension whether this fellow is going to honor my right of way or not and so going by the principle better-safe-than-sorry I stopped.  The other fellow had already stopped by that time and even gave a short honk to draw my attention and motioned to me to go ahead (as per the rule!)  I was lucky in so much as there was no vehicle following me closely.  Had there been one it would surely have crashed into mine as it would not have anticipated my stop.  I hardly need to add that  in India it would be the other way round: taking your right of way too seriously could be fatal!  Here in the motherland the guiding principle is that all drivers on the road have a free will and will surely exercise it and you better be ready for it.

Apart from attitudes you find significant differences in the physical design of the road too.  Our roads are plain strips with no internal modulations but only curve of the complete strip around lands difficult to acquire at the time of construction.  In USA I found most roads straight as straight can be.  But these straight roads have internal modulations that show a brilliant application of thought.  At most intersections, the side of the road feeding the intersection becomes wider and as a corollary the other side which is fed from the intersection becomes narrow, sometimes to the extent of being reduced to a single lane.  This facilitates the traffic on the feeder side to properly segregate itself for left turn, right turn, and going straight through.  Naturally the same thing happens on the road across the intersection too.  Thus when you position yourself in the lane for a left turn (and so has part of the traffic on the opposite side of the intersection), you find yourself facing one lane of traffic from the other side head on!!  (Please remember that left in USA is what right is in India.)  When you experience it for the first time it can scare you out of your wits: For you never experience this in India where everything is rigidly linear and equally spaced.  Such a widening out to the left happens at left turns into smaller lanes too.  This allows you to wait in the marked space for a safe opportunity to make the turn without holding up the traffic behind you.  Such protected lanes for a turn are delineated by solid white lines.  As in India so in USA a solid white line means that you cannot cross it from either side to move into a different lane.  The difference lies in the simple fact that the rule is scrupulously honored in USA.  On highways the solid white lines marking an exit are accompanied by a legend "Lane Must Exit."  You just cannot change your mind once you enter the segregated lane!  And this Must-Exit rule applies to left turn lanes on normal roads too just as rigidly.

Having mentioned highways, called expressways in USA, I must add that one finds the same shining examples of application of thought on the highways too.  When you enter an expressway from a regular city road the entrance is in the form of a long strip that allows you to accelerate to highway speeds before merging into the highway.  So you don't barge into a highway, you merge into it.  This minimizes chances of any collisions on account of serious mismatch of speeds.  Though at peak traffic hours when the traffic on the expressway also turns slow, a signal light starts operating on the entrance allowing only one vehicle at a time. Next vehicle enters after a couple of seconds.  This again ensures a fair match between traffic already on the expressway and that entering it at any point. You also have long exits that allow you to reduce you speed in a comfortable fashion.  There is no slow moving traffic on the expressways, no pedestrians making adventurous attempts to cross the roads and above all absolutely no traffic moving the wrong way to avoid a circuitous drive back!!  The lane discipline is superb.

Here in India I recently drove from Lucknow to Basti, a distance of around 200 kms.  It is a pretty good highway by Indian standards though I did find a couple of can-break-your-axle strengths potholes that had been painted black to minimize the probability of vehicles avoiding it altogether.  Let me not forget to mention that the consideration (toll tax) for such excellent service levels was a whopping Rs.400/= for a return trip!!  For that amount you can ride a deluxe Volvo service to your destination!!!  But let us not digress.  What was most perplexing was the near total lack of documentation on the road.  You have to strain hard to figure out which area you are passing through, where will the next exit take you and how far you might be from your final destination.  A few hoardings that you could spot after straining a great deal will be hidden behind foliage!!  All your information comes from commercial hoardings which often mention name of the place and signages on shops which are never too far away from a highway!!

Comparing the level of documentation on the roads and expressways of USA with what we have would be like comparing a well authored multi-volume leather bound book to a small crumpled up manuscript containing the first rough draft of a chapter.  Over and above the static documentation showing your location, destinations to which the roads are headed, upcoming exits, speed limits etc., you also have live displays about any adverse weather conditions or likely delays to be faced due to heavy traffic up the route.  It takes time to get used to such service levels and drive normally without getting bowled over.

Before I close I must mention the stop-look-go as mandated and practiced on roads which may lack documentation and signalling.  At such intersection on such roads each vehicle is supposed to stop and then proceed only after any vehicles which stopped earlier have passed.  Even if you are absolutely certain that there is no other vehicle except yours you must still stop at the intersection and penalties for not doing so can be quite stiff.  Such rules and well defined right of way coupled with the fact that these are scrupulously enforced and followed make life really easy for drivers.

Even the huge parking lots surrounding shopping malls or offices also have arrows and markings to guide you and keep the flow smooth.  What amazes you most is that most of this terrific network of roads was built in 1930s and 40s!

The roads are evolving in India too and we get a glimpse of future in certain recently constructed stretches of highways.  Let us hope that someday we will also have a network that will offer safe and pleasurable drive to millions of existing and upcoming new automobile owners.  Amen!