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-   -   Bad Drivers - How do you spot 'em (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/road-safety/3580-bad-drivers-how-do-you-spot-em-386.html)

Need we say anything about the driving skills of auto drivers in Bangalore ? They're easily the most 'innovative' guys on our roads. An incident yesterday morning...
Was on the 2 wheeler, returning home after dropping my child off at school in a narrow street but wide enough for 2 cars definitely. There was a tractor in the opposite direction and suddenly out comes an auto overtaking the tractor and driving straight onto me forcing me to stop; But guess what, he had other plans!
He veers around me and jumps one side onto the footpath and passes me from my left side all the while accelerating to higher speeds :Frustrati
Took a few seconds for me and other folks on the road to heave a sigh of relief and get back our breath.

Yesterday in the evening at about 8.00 p.m I was going to pick up my brother from his class. I wanted to take left from ideal colony signal and reach on the opposite side of Krishna hips because my brother had gone to take same notes from a friend. The signal turned green I took my left and before I could complete a red Indica MH 12 DE 8331 came cutting across me. I continued and blocked his path. Pointed a finger at the signal. He was talking on the phone and started turning to the right. I again overtook him and made him slow down and clicked a pic of his car. Unfortunately the image is very unclear. He was giving me all possible weird stares but I was least Interested in even looking at him. Can anyone tell me if the pune rto has any place to report such things?

Not bad driving as such!
But a Swift dropped a huge mud stone thingy from behind the rear bumper or mud guard, which broke into relatively small pieces on impact with the road and hurled towards me. I braked in order to avoid it but, one of the big ones was able to make contact with my bonnet, windshield and roof! :(

Sudden lane change could've saved my car but may have startled the traffic coming from behind!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOCU4NudlGY

In other news, I had purchased a new Blackvue 2ch, which records from the rear glass as well, but turns out that customs detained it, citing weird reasons!
Maybe they are bad drivers and dont want me to record them! :P

An idiot (might be decent of a reptile species) driving a white polo tdi was driving zig zag all the way from RT Nagar main road to Cantonment railway station. Only till here because this is where I managed to overtake him as he was stuck behind an equally lousy auto driver.

The polo was bearing registration number KA 04 MJ 7005 if I am able to recollect it correctly.

Today morning I was witness to an incident, I was waiting at the signal near Veerasandra on Hosur Road to turn green, a TN registration number TN49 xxxx, Sri Siddalingeshwara name in Kannada comes behind my car and honks to move me, I refused, then one person comes out of the bus and knocks on my co-driver window and instructs me to move on. I did not want to start an argument with this guy but the way these private buses behave on Hosur Road leaves me wondering why we need traffic police at this junction, anyway they are not doing their job. Bangalore Traffic Police are turning out to be the most corrupt government organization in Karnataka.

The exact same thing has happened to me too about 2 months back. The location was the signal before HSR flyover on outer ring road. Dont think it was the same bus, as the route is different.

The cleaner / door checker came down and asked me to move the vehicle to the right lane so they can pass as they were 'running late'. I refused; because i had been fined once before for being accommodating. Couple of years back, at whitefield - Graphite India signal - i gave in to the non-stop honking of a vehicle behind me, moved past the pedestrian crossing to let him pass, and was promptly caught by the camera and a challan came to my address!

The auto guys in chennai are among the WORST drivers in the whole world!!!!!! Yesterday a dumb autowala tried to overtake me on my left in a single lane road, at peak hours.It was a nightmare as i could not let him pass due to the oncoming traffic on the other lane and he simply would not pull back...it was a mighty effort to not crush him between the pavement and the vehicle!!!!.... It is so disgusting that these auto guys, who have an average age range of 30+, have an utter disregard for road safety.....and good autodrivers are so rare, its like looking for a needle in a haystalk!!

With no offence to anyone, I have a question to ask.

In Bangalore, most of the signals have a crazy logic. The right turn is red, whereas the go straight is green.
So what happens is, if one is in the middle lane or left lane and need to make a turn towards right, one gets stopped by the red signal to turn right. Whereas, there would be many vehicles still wanting to go straight, because the signal allows them to go straight.

Some signals on my route with this stupid logic are - Udupi Garden, HSR Layout, Kundanahalli, to name a few.

Now comes my question to both of you - Were you in the left lane / middle lane waiting for the signal to turn green to take a right turn ? Or were you waiting for the signal to turn green to go straight ?
If the later was your situation, then you were right in not budging, unless the signal turned green to go straight.
Incase you were waiting to make a right turn, logically you should have been in the right most lane.

I have encountered millions of morons who in an attempt to quickly make a right turn, take the left most lane and make a big right turn, but get stopped suddenly by the red signal to turn right. So what happens is the vehicle who could go straight are now stuck behind.
Same case with free lefts, like the SilkBoard signal from BTM side and Kundanahalli signal from Marathalli side.

Just today, I wanted to take the free left, towards Madiwala at the SilkBoard signal, from BTM Side, but all vehicles going straight had blocked the entire width of the road. I kept my hands on the horn for about 40-50 secs at a stretch to make some bikers and a cab move out of the way to leave the left lane free.

Re-iterating, I am not exactly aware of the situation you were in. So apologies if I typed anything offensive.

Why do you think this is crazy logic ? There are such signals in Chennai too and I don't see anything crazy about this signal configuration.
Eg. the Madhya Kailash signal where when coming from IIT, it can be red for taking right towards IT corridor, but green for going straight. This configuration is to enable two-way traffic to flow in both directions.

There are worse things that happen at Chennai. You are on the IT corridor and the go-straight signal is green and you are clipping at good speed on the middle lane. Suddenly you see one of those mammoth Govt/Pvt buses taking a full right turn from the left-most side of the road (to do a U-turn) and blocking all the 3 lanes . A typical heart-in-the-mouth moment and can be dangerous if you are on a bike.

BTW, all buses here take a right from left-most side. And this has nothing to do with turning radius because we are not talking U-turns, but a proper right-turn, eg the turn from Taramani towards Thiruvanmiyur. Here the buses are just moronic idiots inconveniencing others.

It is very good logic, and prevents accidents to those turning right. Of course, signals only prevent accidents if people obey them
"one" should have been in the right lane. And one should not stop and get in the way of vehicles that are in the right lanes. Equally, traffic in a wrong lane should not hassle stationary vehicles in front.

We all get in a wrong lane sometimes. It calls for a bit more patience. Sometimes it calls for going somewhere else! At the last minute, a passenger may say, "Go that way!" and we have to say, "Can't. I'll do a u-turn as soon as I can."

Totally relate to this. Also on free lefts sometimes bikers/rickshaw pullers/scooters block the left completely and on a free left I find it a little more peaceful to wait for the signal to turn green rather than argue or reason with people about my right of way. Considering it's not the same person everyday and it happens almost every day waiting is a better option rather than wasting energy.

Also these folks who come from extreme lefts and then make a right turn blindly change lanes when making that turn and some of them while taking the turn switch from extreme left to extreme right. For someone who cares about his cars he has no option but to brake and let him go. On off days I don't and honk the living day lights out of them.

I sometimes feel bad for traffic cops. For every minute they try to discipline someone to go back because he's standing in the middle of the junction how many can be possibly correct without being completely exhausted? If no one is willing to follow rules then traffic cops can't be blamed. Courtesy can not be beaten into someone's head. You learn it by yourself.

Well in my opinion, a lot of drivers are stupid and not the signal. These signals are programmed the way they are for a reason. In India we do not know how to interpret the signals and how to negotiate them!

For instance if one has to take a U turn and the right signal is RED and the straight signal is GREEN, this person has to be on the right side of the lane and NOT on the middle/left. However almost 90% of the drivers are in the middle/left and want to take a U turn resulting in a chaos.

EDUCATION and knowing and interpreting signals is extremely important to drive on any roads. Having said that, the authorities also must represent that via signs and paints on the road.

I come from Bhubaneswar, which is a fast emerging city on the Eastern coast of India. In my 30 years of life, I have seen with my eyes, the increase in vehicular density.
Near my house, there are 3 signals. The concept / logic was to leave one side for 40-45 seconds only, while the other 3 sides waited.
The vehicular density has probably become 10 times of what it was 5 years back, almost equal to that of Bangalore, but jams never happen. Why ? Because the concept is clear - Only one side should move. Period. When the turn for your side comes, you go left, right, center or into space, doesn't matter. Creates zero confusion and absolute discipline.

We are Indians, we will never learn to give right of way. The concept of stopping a turn, just to allow the oncoming traffic free, creates more and more confusion.
More so, it increases the risk of a speeding vehicle which wants to go straight, rear-ending a waiting vehicle. Plus, people will always block the free lane. Here, we drive where we find space, not where we intend to travel (it's just the opposite of IronH4WK's signature).

So in my opinion, leaving only one side at a time, would not only ease free movement of traffic, but also create safety that there won't be any surprise from a law-breaking biker who wants to still make that right turn irrespective of the signal being red. Just an opinion, we are Indians, we love to do what WE think is right, and not what the law says. :D

No rule/law can be idiot-proof. If you are going to factor into a system the possibility of someone running a red-light (gross traffic violation), it does not really matter what signal configuration is used - because the end result will be chaos. Signal configurations cannot be uniform across the world (one side goes, all others wait for 45 seconds), but depends on the junction, the kind of traffic volume, traffic-density difference between various roads of the junction etc. What works for the junction near your home need not work for other places.

Absolutely not offensive, on the contrary, its quite logical too. In my case i can answer to your question - its true, that this particular signal in question has the kind of arrangement you mentioned. it has a two stage signal where the straight one opens for more time than the one for right turn. But when this incident happened, the signal was completely Red for us and there were vehicles coming from HSR side, joining outer ring road. The bus and I, both were waiting to go straight and were at the left lane.

And yes, its true that many a time vehicles stop haphazardly, blocking the lane for which the signal is open.