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-   -   The Futility of Hasty Driving (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/road-safety/203681-futility-hasty-driving-6.html)

Count me in for being surprised. This flies in the face of what I was thinking about this up until now. So even in short sprints and in stop-and-go conditions, a bike doesn't have the edge? Okayyy... :eek:

Tell me about it! If I hadn't actually seen and identified my colleague in the car in front of me and I hadn't actually seen him pull into the parking right after me, I would never have believed it either! I didn't stop unnecessarily anywhere on the way on the bike. And took almost every possible gap available.

Quite possibly a freak co-incidence, in part due to the unique traffic conditions in our beloved Bangalore ORR but maybe not. Maybe like the work analogy, we Bangalore bikers tend to ride 'busy' instead of riding 'smart'. :)

A very similar Monday morning experience, except with roles reversed - I was riding a scooter and there was a Bad driver in a Hyundai Verna who was driving very rash.
Somewhere on Suranjandas road, this car was doing much higher speeds than all other traffic and zig zagging his way and also overtook me from the left. Up ahead there was a traffic cop who was looking in the opposite direction egging vehicles to move and his palm was up facing us indicating it's Stop for our direction. But the Verna cut across moving traffic from the opposite direction to make a right turn. Seeing this, the cop reversed his hand signal stopping traffic in the opposite direction! After this right turn, he zoomed through the residential area and I lost him. I continued in my usual route which is usually the smaller lanes. His maniacal driving actually unnerved me so much that I was even slower than usual. Another 2-3Km later, when I reached near Indiranagar, I see the same Verna again stuck behind a long line of cars waiting to joining 100 feet road, so much for all the haste :D

I took a road to the left that goes parallel to the 100 feet road and joins back onto 100 feet road further ahead towards Intermediate Ring Road. This entire stretch was devoid of traffic and in the next 5 minutes I was at my destination and never saw the Verna again!

Driving hastily is one thing, being distracted while doing so takes it to a whole another level.

Once while riding from Bangalore to Kollam, I was just about to enter Salem center so was gradually dropping my speed from 130'ish to city limit speeds and just about when I closed my throttle my rear end goes sideways, luckily I was still in the power band so a jab at the throttle got me steady.

At a safe distance with the horn pressed(all the while) I started to drop speed and come to a safe halt, just then a guy in a premium white sedan overtakes me in a zig-zag motion like he's playing NFS and entertaining his Kid who was also co-driving the car, I had half the mind to hurl abuses at him but seeing the kid I bit my tongue.



The incident shook me up because I was on a motorcycle and if it weren't for the longer wheelbase of the said motorcycle a whole different scene would've unfolded.

Funny thing is in 2017 a few years after the above incident while riding from Kochi to Kollam for the weekend I was riding at a slower pace not above 70'ish in 3rd or 4th gear and a fellow doing a quick Fast and Furious style overtake of a Bus didn't expect me to be where I was, as a result he swiped hard towards the left swiping my rear end almost off the road.

This time as well I was in the power band(Always be in the Power Band! As Ryan from Fortnine says, "Coasting Kills!") so with plenty of throttle I regained composure and pulled off the road and stopped, the guy in the Swift, had tore his bumper, part of which was sticking to my exhaust, after a seconds hesitation he took a turn and drove off with part of his torn bumper dragging.

There was a bus stop nearby to where I'd pulled off and everyone there was just as surprised as I was seeing the guys reaction, didn't even bother to apologize.

While riding at an even slower pace I recalled an advice a friends dad had given me a couple of years ago;

"When Driving in India, Drive as though you're the only sane person on the road"

Makes perfect sense if you ask me! :D

Ha haaaa, You have put that nicely & perfectly. It's not about to save time, but that feel, ah.

As mentioned by few earlier in this thread, the point is to know the difference between reckless & fast driving.

Well, I am in the same camp as you and GTO. However, I refrained from commenting in this thread because the OP was not talking about the hazards or danger of hasty driving, but rather the futility of doing so, with regards to travel time/arrival time etc.

With regards to the OP's stated intention, I concur with his view.

Cheers

Applies to only non-fastag users :

Two math numbers stick out for highway drives - "avg speed" and "running average speed". There is an easy rule of thumb - mostly "avg speed" on modern Indian highways (2+2, 3+3) for a general car will range from 60 to 80 kph for people whose cruising speed ranges from 90-130kph. Let's take 70 kph as the mean avg speed. Our toll booths are spaced one every 50km, roughly. That would mean every minute lost at a toll booth is worth 1.166 km. This in turn, would mean that the distance covering efficiency drops 2.333% every minute spent at the toll booth. So if you wait 5 minutes at a toll booth, your travel efficiency has come down 11.66%. In effect, the penalty for every stationary minute at toll booth is mega, bringing down avg speed drastically despite whether running average is high or low. The higher and higher your running avg speed is (due to higher top speed), this efficiency drop rate at toll booths will be higher and higher. There will be a point of diminishing returns where an extremely high top speed is of no use. When traffic is higher than usual, it has a doubling effect on the efficiency - the running average comes down, also the wait time at toll booth goes up. In conclusion, for improving peak to average speed ratio (efficiency of time) nothing is as effective as an early morning or late night start. The most important takeaway - when there is moderate to high traffic, driving like a maniac at 120 kph, will get you to your 300/400 km far destination, atmost 5 or 6 minutes before a sedately driven uncle driver who cruises in his alto at 90kph. The math says so.

Futile indeed.

Mumbai is beautiful on a Sunday morning. So I'm driving the Ertiga from South Bombay to the suburbs and I came across two aggressively driven cars (they weren't together). One, a white S-Class and the other a dark blue M6. I'm chilling in the Ertiga, rarely going above 50% revs, and these guys are driving quite hard, cutting through lanes etc. Thanks to traffic (and their rather average driving skills), neither the S-Class nor the M6 got anywhere out of my sight. And I wasn't even trying - was genuinely just cruising & enjoying a leisurely drive. At every signal, either I was ahead of them / they were beside me / they were one car length ahead.

The highways here are no exception.
As soon as highways begin, a lot of cars, of all capacities and conditions suddenly speed up, start cutting lanes and yet end up one behind the other either behind a pair of parallely driven slow moving trucks or at the next toll gate.

When with a co passenger, this amongst the most common jokes we share.lol:

The only place where such badly driven cars annoyingly make progress is when they aggressively jump and try to cut into toll Qs or similar places or by jumping signals bang out of turn in the city. Really irritating!

What a beautiful and highly relevant thread. Ghosh how did I miss it. Thank you Malyaj. Neither in traffic nor on the highway does aggressive driving get us anywhere faster. And if we do get there faster the difference is of a few minutes. If our lives and limbs are worth those few minutes then nothing more need be said. As @Venkyhere has shown 30 seconds or 60 seconds at a signal or toll booth wipe out any 'gains'. To say that those who drive aggressively and switch lanes constantly get ahead is like saying the guy who switched 8 jobs in 15 years ultimately did the best in his career. Ain't seen that happen.

Wonderful analogy. In fact I have noticed that some of the most successful people in the corporate world are ones who have spent a really long time with their companies. This is particularly true overseas.

Not sure if this is the right place to share my experience but earlier today my Zen Estilo(F10D), got side-swiped right.





The culprit;



Incident:

I was driving the F10D on the SH1 stretch after Pothencode, TVM, I was cruising faster than the regular traffic but under the speed limit, I'm a stickler for the 'Keep Left' ideology and only shift to the right side of the road to overtake, irrespective of whether lane markers are present.

At times I honk pretty hard at those who hog the right end of the road by cruising at below-par speeds, same goes for those who overtake Le Indian Style.

So since I was overtaking almost everyone on the road, I was frequenting the right end and returning to the left, and this tipper lorry is maintaining a steady pace, so I shifted to the right end, honked and then overtook him, mid overtaking he slides to the right and scraped me.

The lorry was driven by a kid younger than me(I'm 26), and he started to blame me for overtaking at a faster pace, which didn't make sense as I was overtaking from the right side and the whole concept of overtaking involves the over-taker being faster than the over-taken, plus I had even honked, which I believe to be courtesy from my end.

Not wanting to waste time I decided to call the cops and settle things properly since we both have insurance, but then the kid called up another tipper driver who drove up and shared their plight of being financially incapable of fixing my car and requested that I not call the cops as that would delay their delivery and gave me 500/- for my damages.

I'm not bothered about the compensation nor the scratches, as I'm not a stickler for aesthetics in-spite of the F10D sporting a panda theme, which was not my idea to begin with.

Estimate from FNG was 3.5k, not intending to fix the car, as its better to sport a scar as a reminder of the incident than wash away the reminiscence by throwing a wad of cash(which is unreasonable to begin with) at it. I just got the quote when the Tipper dudes asked me for estimate damage charges.

What concerns me is the uncertainty of whether I had a part to play with the accident, was I being hasty cruising at a higher speed than the sparse traffic? From where I see things I was sticking to the rules all the way, but still this happened and it does bother me as I'm not a driver by default and if I were on 2 wheels then I'd be a goner for sure.

Edit: Sorry for the crappy pictures, I use a flip-phone and these were taken on the Tab which has a crappy camera being a tablet.

A.P.

What a frightening experience. I'd be scared to have a conversation with an obvious thug.

The damage is probably not as bad as it looks. The paint you have acquired from the truck will come off. You may decide that you can live with whatever actual damage remains, but if you can see any bare metal, please get that touched up quickly, as it will soon rust.

I had a kiss with a mini-truck (my fault) leaving yellow and green paint on my car. As the FNG man said, "the paint didn't stick very well to the truck: it will come off your car easily." And it did, but I was left with damage that had to tinkered and painted.

Time saving is negligible unless one can maintain 120+.
On most highways anything above 120 means a lot of braking because of idiots on the road. Too stressful.
On certain roads like the vadodra expressway or jaipur ajmer route or meerut expressway high speed as long as driven defensively makes the drive much more enjoyable.
The Neanderthals honking in their Swift's and Altos and cretas are supremely annoying. Luckily the audio and half decent imo sound insulation of my car helps to keep my cool. Can't even hear their horns and the bixenons shut up 3/5 high beamers.
PS. All this is coming from someone who's changed 3 sets of tires in 40k kms, but hey why else did I buy a German turbo petrol