[Zappo]

By jove... you are pissed as neem paste on bitter gourd ain't you? Well actually you are justified in some of your observations about the road sense of people in this country. And yet you are skipping many other issues here. Yes the roads are nowhere near what you get in a 1st world country. Roads in many african and other asian countries are as bad or even worst. Yes the vehicular desity is high but then that is what happens when you suddenly start growing at break-neck speed as India is. It takes the official machinery its own sweet time to wake up to the challenges, anywhere... more so in a corruption prone country.

And yet, as you said you have lived here for 30 years. Are you seeing these things for the first time? The problem is you have still not atuned yourself to the realities here. You are still living or rather trying to live by the canadian standards.

Taking a sharp banking curve like the one near anushakti nagar on the narrow flyover at 70kmph is thoughtless. You always have to make pre-calculations. You have to remember that most indian roads and particularly those narrow ones that meet them are mostly without signals. And people do not think twice before driving in out of nowhere at high speeds. So you always need to be mentally prepared to take evasive action.

High speed or the overtaking lanes in this country belongs to the slowest of traffic (rumbling trucks, slowish bikes etc). Btw, I have never seen this fast lane, overtaking lane definition written anywhere in this country. Have you? Its only an extrapolation of our ideas from the facts in western world. I think so.

The fact my dear friend is that to be safe in this country you always have to be alert. When I drive my eyes keep periodically darting from the RVM to the ORVMs to the corners of the road ahead. I always expect a crazy nut to come spinning out like a out-of-control top from any corner. That is way of life here.