[ankurchaturvedi]

Another incident near five garders, Wadala, Mumbai. Yesterday morning at around 8:15 A.M,i was at the signal near VJTI.The signal was red,and hence i had halted (was in the first row, right next to a BEST bus). I was half expecting a car to come up behind me and start honking and flashing (nowadays if someone does not do it, i feel something is amiss) well, that's exactly what happend- a blue dzire comes up and does the expected. I am like . He continued to honk non stop. I did not pay any attention, but casually lowered down my window and pointed at the red signal.Thankfully he got the message and stopped his antics. Later on, he turned into my institute and my reaction was . He turned out to be a professor in one of the other departments of the institute.

[hemanth.anand]

I spot a bad driver everyday. Infact I sit insode the vehicle when he drives. He is my company cab driver
The previous driver was decent. But i don't know what hit the transport management people, they swapped two drivers of different routes.

• Drives too slow on the fast lane of a tolled road (doesn't cross 60kmph on a road where the speed limit is 120kmph)
• Drives too fast and too rash on other roads, like his seat is on fire
• When one toll gate is empty and the other has vehicle, he takes the lane behind with other vehicles
• When the main carriageway signal is green and free, he takes the illegal barricade opening and enters teh service road and then at the signal rejoins the main road thereby obstructing the vehicles on the highway.
• He waits at the beginnning of a median a distance from a junction even though the road is free and on purpose drives on the wrong side of the median till the junction

We've now seen him for 3 weeks, and told him enough times to correct these things. He doesn't seem to be correcting himself. Very soon, I'm planning to complain against him

[arun_josie]

Originally Posted by hemanth.anand

I spot a bad driver everyday. Infact I sit insode the vehicle when he drives. He is my company cab driver
The previous driver was decent. But i don't know what hit the transport management people, they swapped two drivers of different routes.

Maybe he didn't like the swap and now he wants you guys to complaint so that the swap happens again and he gets his old route.

• When the main carriageway signal is green and free, he takes the illegal barricade opening and enters teh service road and then at the signal rejoins the main road thereby obstructing the vehicles on the highway.
• He waits at the beginnning of a median a distance from a junction even though the road is free and on purpose drives on the wrong side of the median till the junction

We've now seen him for 3 weeks, and told him enough times to correct these things. He doesn't seem to be correcting himself. Very soon, I'm planning to complain against him

Why wait to report these offences?

[hemanth.anand]

Originally Posted by arun_josie

Maybe he didn't like the swap and now he wants you guys to complaint so that the swap happens again and he gets his old route.

I guess so too. these tactics are very common for us

Why wait to report these offences?

Giving him some time in a hope tht he'll improve (mind you everyday atleast 3 people inside the cab say one or the other thing for him to correct). However I agree that we are putting ourselves and other road users at risk till such time.

Anyway, yesterday I had to drive 2 kms to a relatives house and in that, encountered 4 bad drivers.

1. Misplaced Priorities

• I was climbing up a steep gradient
• I am on a bigger road and I come across a small cross road(which is also a steep one)
• A vehicle is coming down that cross road. He doesn't slow down for me and speeds downhill.
• I didn't mind thinking that I was expecting too much in Bengaluru

2. and 3.Wrong Right

• These two drivers were seen 100 mtrs apart from eeach other
• The vehicle coming opposite to my direction had to take a right turn to a cross road.
• It is such a basic sense that right turn shoud always be a long one
• But alas! common sense is uncommon.
• Our "VIP" road users want to take a Right facing the right lane of the cross road and then come to its left lane
• And not to forget the stare at me because I didn't let the "king" pass.
• No prizes for guessing that one was a Dzire cab and another was an autorickshaw

A small Gif (The blue rectangle is my car)


4. I own the road

• I was approaching a T junction following other car in front of me. Both roads were only single lane in each direction.
• One Goods LCV was following me and a couple of 2 wheelers in the gaps between us.
• Everyone of us had to take a left turn.
• The good LCV had a very important work i guess. When I was about to take a left, He overtook me, he came on the right lane.
• Not only did he block the traffic from the opposite direction, but he also came perpendicular to me in an attempt to squeeze in.
• I didn't let him sqeeze and pressed the horn long and hard.
• Then one of the two wheeler came to my window and and elderly person said to me In a preaching tone, he told me, "Have patience young boy, you should not do like this, you should let them pass"
• I told him, "Before preaching me, please wear a helmet and ask your pillion rider to wear one too"
• After the left turn was completed, a few mtrs later, that LCV was beside me and I told him that a right turn is not supposed to be taken like that.
• As expected I got a reply, "I know my driving, just mind your business"

A small Gif (The blue rectangle is my car)


Ok that is the end of an eventful 2Kms and it again reinforced that our country traffic can not improve is a few decades at least.

[ankurchaturvedi]

Originally Posted by hemanth.anand

Anyway, yesterday I had to drive 2 kms to a relatives house and in that, encountered 4 bad drivers.

Well sir, i can empathize with you.

A few observations:
a)In the first case, i am sure the driver did not know that the ascending vehicle has the right of way.The way people drive,i am not sure that too many are aware of this fact.

b)With the LCV, i have observed that many of them are rash drivers who drive in an illogical and monstrous way.Probably the only method to correct them,will be to fine them heavily and after repeated offences, confiscate their license. Also the RTO authorities must be very strict about the driving test.Only then can such a menace be avoided.

Drive safe sir- don't let these type of drivers affect your mood or driving.

[Dry Ice]

Originally Posted by hemanth.anand

Anyway, yesterday I had to drive 2 kms to a relatives house and in that, encountered 4 bad drivers.

1. Misplaced Priorities

2. and 3.Wrong Right

4. I own the road

Ok that is the end of an eventful 2Kms and it again reinforced that our country traffic can not improve is a few decades at least.

Hemanth, the only thing we can change is ourselves. Cribbing about these "bad drivers" here does nothing to them while we waste a good amount of time thinking about them, writing about them, what can be done to teach them a lesson, so on and so forth. While they must be happily doing the same antics and frustrating another BHPian.

I wrote the quoted post below sometime back, and am happy to report, since I have stopped caring about this species, I am a much calmer person during the drives and when I reach my destination. I give them that happy moment that they saved the crucial 5 seconds

Sometimes when I catch up with them on the next signal, they avoid eye contact.

Originally Posted by Dry Ice

I tried meditation today on my way to work

No music and pehle aap (you first). I let everyone cut across, push me off, make me stop, basically everything they wanted to do. Didn't make too much of a difference in my commute time, maybe I took 5 mins more compared to other days when I try to 'educate' folks to follow rules.

One thing I did save was my mental peace! I guess in this country, we need to stop caring about such bad drivers because they are everywhere and cannot be reasoned with.

Super difficult to do though, I admit. Let me see how long I can ignore the bad drivers.

[AutoInt]

Originally Posted by hemanth.anand

Anyway, yesterday I had to drive 2 kms to a relatives house and in that, encountered 4 bad drivers.

1. Misplaced Priorities

2. and 3.Wrong Right

4. I own the road

Ok that is the end of an eventful 2Kms and it again reinforced that our country traffic can not improve is a few decades at least.

I agree with you Hemanth and empathize with you. This is everyday reality and happens every other minute. Short left,Long right, right of way, basic traffic sense etc.. is long forgotten in Bangalore and elsewhere as well.

Trying to compete with them and educating them often leaves us in bad state of mind. For now, as mentioned by Dry Ice, ignoring these behavior is one of the way to keep us calm and hope situation would get better if at all

[vnidta]

Originally Posted by hemanth.anand

He is my company cab driver

I stopped taking cabs long ago due to this very reason. Sometimes, these nutcases will scare you to the brim with their driving (s)kills

Originally Posted by ankurchaturvedi

i am sure the driver did not know that the ascending vehicle has the right of way.The way people drive,i am not sure that too many are aware of this fact.

b)With the LCV, i have observed that many of them are rash drivers who drive in an illogical and monstrous way.Probably the only method to correct them,will be to fine them heavily and after repeated offences, confiscate their license. Also the RTO authorities must be very strict about the driving test.Only then can such a menace be avoided.

You are absolutely right with respect to the right of way thing. I'm sure 70% (let's excuse the rest 30%) of drivers have no clue when it comes to this. Forget rules, it's simple common sense. If someone's descending, he/she needs to be aware of engine braking and needs decently working brakes. If he/she stops, it doesn't take much effort to get moving again. But if someone's ascending, he/she has to have enough power and at the same time needs to maneuver the vehicle around our moon-craters. If one stops, it's a pretty tough job to get moving again without rolling back in most places.., at least to many drivers.

And for the point you've made for which I've highlighted in bold, just take a look at the below picture.



Observe the poster with the AAP logo. It's in our local language.., Kannada. The wordings are

- "nimage yellaa OK! license maadisalu namage 8ne class pass yaake?"

Which can be translated as below:

- "For You, everything's OK! But why is there a requirement for us to have passed 8th class to get a license?"

Of course, there will be a lot of debate/argument with regards to the Section 8 of Central Motor Vehicles Act, but to some extent such rules do make sense since one has to be a literate at least to the most basic level to understand and read boards and make sense out of signs and symbols. But again, these people go out in large numbers to protest against those rules.

The fact remains that we are not here to take away bread from someone's table, but they also need to understand that they should not take away someone's life and get away with it by saying they're illiterate and cannot read and understand signs and symbols.

Our RTOs will have a very tough time in making the rules strict. We can keep blaming them, but they have their own difficulties.., just like the example above. It's pretty hard and we still have a long way to go...

[hemanth.anand]

Originally Posted by ankurchaturvedi

Drive safe sir- don't let these type of drivers affect your mood or driving.

Originally Posted by Dry Ice

Hemanth, the only thing we can change is ourselves. Cribbing about these "bad drivers" here does nothing to them while we waste a good amount of time thinking about them, writing about them, what can be done to teach them a lesson, so on and so forth. While they must be happily doing the same antics and frustrating another BHPian.

Originally Posted by AutoInt

Trying to compete with them and educating them often leaves us in bad state of mind. For now, as mentioned by Dry Ice, ignoring these behavior is one of the way to keep us calm and hope situation would get better if at all

Completely agree with you people. It is important for us to be calm so that some bad drivers on the road don't affect our mood while they care a damn about it.
Inner peace Inner peace...reminds me of Kungfu Panda

[ankurchaturvedi]

Originally Posted by Dry Ice

Hemanth, the only thing we can change is ourselves. Cribbing about these "bad drivers" here does nothing to them while we waste a good amount of time thinking about them, writing about them, what can be done to teach them a lesson, so on and so forth. While they must be happily doing the same antics and frustrating another BHPian.

Originally Posted by AutoInt

Trying to compete with them and educating them often leaves us in bad state of mind. For now, as mentioned by Dry Ice, ignoring these behavior is one of the way to keep us calm and hope situation would get better if at all

Good sirs, I totally agree with both of you. In my angry young man days, i used to teach people like these a sound road lesson. But i later realized that i was stooping down to their level and that was unbecoming of me. I try to keep zen like calmness while driving nowadays and it has helped a lot. "Pehele Aap" always helps

Originally Posted by vnidta

The fact remains that we are not here to take away bread from someone's table, but they also need to understand that they should not take away someone's life and get away with it by saying they're illiterate and cannot read and understand signs and symbols.

Our RTOs will have a very tough time in making the rules strict. We can keep blaming them, but they have their own difficulties.., just like the example above. It's pretty hard and we still have a long way to go...

Thank you for your reply sir, totally agree with you there.Even if some one is unable to process road signs, they should at least have basic road sense and they should be able to read the road-without these two our roads are hazardous at best.One of the way we develop road sense is by observing our peers and other road users and we as country have miserably failed on that account.

[FarPatel]

Strike 1 against the moron truck drivers!
This evening, on my way home there were these two trucks hogging the rightmost and the adjacent lanes. The first pic shows them at a signal in Chembur. Pic 2 shows a traffic cop merely admonishing the one in the adjacent lane. The truck in the rightmost lane had just turned right, so can't blame him for sticking to that side. Immediately after this scene the cop came alongside me, on my right, so I lowered my window and yelled at him: pakdo usko, pakdo... (catch him, catch him). But the truck had already moved away, so the cop flagged me down, got in with me and asked me to catch up with the guy. We caught up with the truck at the next signal, a couple of minutes away, which was red, luckily for us. The last pic shows the cop finally doing his job. During our chase I let the cop have it, asking him why they don't do their job, that I see these guys hogging the right lane every day, suddenly veering to the left when they approach a signal. As luck would have it, this trucker did exactly that just then and I pointed it out to my new friend next to me. I left the two of them to sort it out at the second signal, pic 3, with satisfied feeling, seeing that trucker caught. I hope at least he will have learnt his lesson.
I need to figure out how to reduce a 31 MB video file to a size acceptable here. I'd love to get you guys to hear me yelling at that cop.

[silversteed]

Originally Posted by tharian

It was nice to see rogue buses between Thrissur and Walyar stick to the left lane once the 4 lane begins. It's the same story on the single carriageway.

I have observed that *most* of the buses in Kerala stick to the left lane - KSRTC and the private buses invariably. The right-lane hoggers are usually the trucks, private buses from TN, KA, AP etc, KaSRTC buses (they're the worst kind in my experience - rarely use indicators to change lanes and care two hoots for traffic in the adjacent lane), etc - among the bigger vehicles.

On the other hand I'm expecting some speeding tickets by post as I later found out where they were the cameras were located.

Expect the challans if your car is KL registered. Never heard of anyone with a non-KL vehicle getting speeding challans from KL speed cams by post.

[akshar890]

I might get a lot of flack for this.
But i have noticed that the guys that own the KTM Duke tend to do a lot of rash driving.
For Example:
1) Tend to squeeze between two cars driving side by side on a 2 lane road.
2) Dangerously swerving through traffic at high speeds

[srvm]

(No offense to fellow-BHPians) I have always found fairly good correlation between bike riders who hold the throttle/handle-bar right at its ends and rash/dangerous driving. Anybody else thinks so (particularly Bangaloreans)?

[tharian]

Originally Posted by silversteed

I have observed that *most* of the buses in Kerala stick to the left lane - KSRTC and the private buses invariably.

Yes, most of them do. This was the Kuthiraan stretch and before. On the Kuthiraan stretch , it is the same pedal to metal driving.

Originally Posted by silversteed

Expect the challans if your car is KL registered. Never heard of anyone with a non-KL vehicle getting speeding challans from KL speed cams by post.

Good news, I was expecting quite a few.



Since this is the bad drivers thread, let me pen down a close call we had nearing Thrissur from Ernakulam on the 4 lane road.
I was doing around 60-70kmph after a signal when a lady on a scooter turned on the indicator to the right and without checking her sides started moving to the right steadily.(she was on the extreme left) The moment I saw her move to the right I left the horn blasting and braked at the same time. What she did next was crazy. I was still on the fast lane and braking and she was ahead of me by now and braked and stopped. Thankfully since I hit the brakes from when I noticed her drifting, I had slowed down enough to stop without hitting her.

Now the scary part, I had overtaken an empty Leyland Boss earlier who was doing good speeds when I overtook him. After I stopped, I looked in the rear view and saw him sliding with his back out almost sideways towards my car Lucky the roads were dry there and he stopped in time.I heard screeching sounds behind him as well, no idea what happened.
The lady on the scooter moved as soon as she saw I had stopped and took the next break in divider. The Leyland driver took the same turn as well. Not sure what happened after as we continued on.