Team-BHP - Characteristics of Drivers- Esp. in Bangalore

Truck Drivers: You usually don't get to see them directly because they sit somewhere at an altitude. You can however identify the cabin crew by a frantically waving hand on the non-driver side. This hand belongs to a crew-member called 'cleaner' and all scholastic efforts till date have failed to decipher the symbolic meaning of these waving. It is however Safe to assume that these waving mean 'stay away'. Fortunately the trucks are prohibited from the arterial roads. But you can see them racing each other at 30 kmph and 31 kmph (an exaggeration, surely! – its more like 20 & 21 kmph) on the ring road. They successfully block the whole width of the road. It is advised that you overtake them from the left (yes!, the wrong ? side) for, they wont let you pass from the right side anyway/under any circumstances. The other advice is to keep away from them. When going from Whitefield towards KRPuram, at the turning into the ring road (before the bridge), if the truck driver seeks to move to the right lane, BEWARE, for he is preparing to turn……. LEFT. Did I hear someone ask ‘what about the signal?’. ‘What signal?’ it is beneath any self-respecting truck driver’s honour to signal a turn; even if they were ready to ignore their ‘honour’, they wouldn’t be able to since most of signaling equipment in any truck is broken. Also, they are a special breed which does not recognize ‘no parking’ or ‘no parking-no stopping’ signs – perhaps there is a special dispensation under which they don’t need to pay heed to road signs nor do they need to be particularly trained in the art of driving. An act of the Indian parliament (perhaps!) also permits them to drive on whichever side of the road they deem convenient, never mind if the rest of the traffic seems to be going against them, so the policemen, who MAY happen to be around to notice, too ignore their antics. If the petrol pump is on the other side of the road, instead of taking a U turn at the crossing ‘after’ the pump, they will drive against the traffic from the crossing ‘before’ the pump. The same tactic goes for weighing stations and punchar, as it is called. A lot of times, they don’t even need to worry about the median and ride over the medians wherever they feel like it. This is particularly true for sand-laden trucks.

BMTC Drivers: You can see them from a mile away from the distinguishing color and driving. It can be very dangerous and frustrating to follow a BMTC bus. The bus follows Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and at any instance you can not predict the speed AND the intended position correctly. One observation that might help the reader is that they always keep right between bus stops and move sharply to the left (well, almost) at bus stops. This is the apt opportunity for you to overtake the bus and go get stuck behind the next one. The drivers can be seen although mostly through the bus's rear view mirror. If you happen to see them directly through their window, be prepared to listen to advice (varies from motherly, fatherly to ultra indecent) for having overtaken them in a dangerous fashion. When they manage to bully and rashly overtake you, you can hear the din of laughter resembling what you imagine to be Ravana’s or Yama’s laughter, if you listen carefully!. While a normal bus can easily create a road block on any given road, there are special capacity joint-buses (called janti vaahana) which have an uncanny power of blocking up to 3 lanes AND a road or two at a time at a junction.

Cab Drivers: Characterized by red eyes, irritable nature, unkempt facial hair, constant honking even at stationary objects! They always try to go at 80 kmph, assume the urgency of an ambulance and expect everyone else has less important job. Most of them do not sleep for days together and some of them are trying to compete with David Blain for stretching human limits. The author personally knows few cab drivers who do not have a habitat. They just keep a pair of spare change of clothes in the cab, eat, sleep in the cab and use public bathrooms. Driving style of these indicates that many of them were auto rickshaw drivers earlier. However, they still seem to carry the self image of an auto rickshaw and try to squeeze a MUV into the 1 meter gap between any two objects. They love it when there is a traffic jam, coz it gives them an excuse to replicate truck drivers and use the other side of the road to zip thru and beat the jam.

Car Drivers: characterized by creased foreheads. Having paid through their noses and fighting to pay the EMI, they are obsessive about their cars and want to make sure nobody bumps/scratches their car body. This sits on the mind perpetually and causes those creases on foreheads. Most pitiable class of drivers having the most to lose from the mistakes of other classes of drivers.

Auto Rickshaw Drivers: Having stood over years as undisputed symbol for rash driving, they are unfortunately losing grounds to cab drivers. (Unfortunate because a rashly driven MUV is more dangerous than a rashly driven auto rickshaw). Auto rickshaws are the vehicles with most diverse speed ranges. They travel at speeds approaching zero when they have no passengers aboard and travel at speed of unto 3x10^8 m/s when a passenger is aboard. Analogous to the belief that "a cat can pass through any hole that is bigger than its skull" auto rickshaws can "pass through any gap that is wider than the headlight". They defy all laws of Physics. A typical auto drive sits with a calm and indifferent attitude of a formula-1 driver just before the race. Based on his age, he is a Rajkumar/Shankarnag/Darshan fan. He feels strongly towards these actors and towards Karnataka and Kannada. In a surprising observation, many auto drivers refuse 1.5 times the meter reading after 10 PM if you are exiting from Ranga Shankara. This is their humble way of commemorating their favorite star who made films like Auto-Raja. Beware of that foot sticking out from any side of the auto – it is a subtle (coz its so easily missed) signal that the driver needs to turn in that direction.

Two Wheeler Drives: The class in the most advantageous position. They consist of a variety of sub-populations like office goers, salesmen, mothers dropping children to school, college students, neighborhood store owner transporting about 1 ton weight on a moped, whole families of 4-5 children going on an outing etc. They usually mind their own business and do not cause inconvenience to other types of vehicles (except as mentioned below). They use all possible space on and around the road, including footpaths, medians, drainages, staircases etc and thus enhance infrastructure utilization. The most dangerous are the ones who are male having a young female riding pillion. But the ones who take the cake are the rash ones who have their wife holding new-born infants in the pillion seat. The favourite pass-time for two wheeler riders is to count the number of car mirrors they can knock down each day. Am sure there is a website somewhere keeping tabs on the count and giving out prizes, the way they single-mindedly knock down the mirrors.

Last, but surely not the least, is that special breed of vehicles – the tractor trailers, the JCB’s, the road rollers – though most of them don’t have a ‘permit’ for using the roads (they are not supposed to be on the roads), you will find them using the right side of the road (meant for overtaking) while moving at 10 kmph, causing traffic jams for a few km behind them, during peak hours. A special qualification of the drivers is that they are deaf.

P.S. Mods- dunno if this is the appropriate section. Please mpve if it is not!