[powerwidFE]

It is nothing new that the road infrastructure is India is bad and highly unscientific. For safe driving, it is important to spot, anticipate and avoid both bad drivers and roads with bad, unscientific designs.
At T-BHP the thread "Bad Drivers: how to spot them" is already present to take care of the former and I am starting this thread so as to take care of the latter.

Following are some of the points about bad road designs to keep in mind from my side:

1. Bus stops right after a traffic light.
2. Bus stops just after a left turn.
3. Traffic lights shielded from view by trees, banners, etc.
4. Potholes bam there in the middle of high speed roads.
5. Traffic lights on relatively signal free roads.(High risk of rear endings due to sudden stoppage.)
6. Petrol Pumps/Gas stations with no gap in medians in front of / near them(lots of idiots coming the wrong way).
7. Bus depots/ terminals on major roads: buses emerge out of nowhere to join the road, causing mayhem.
8. Pedestrian crossings at unscientific locations.
9. Gaps in median made by bikers/two wheelers as shortcuts(to where : heaven?)

These are just few of the many possible points. Fellow BHPians are requested to join as many points as possible to this list for the benefit of one and all.

[Recompose]

Road humps almost everywhere. I encounter at least 30 speedbreakers on my way to work. Most of the road humps are real back and suspension breakers.

The route from West of Chroad Road to Yeswantpur was recently reopened, and has 3 humps in a span of 200 meters. The first and third were malicious, scraping the underbelly of the car each time. It took a week for them to reduce the gradient - probably after it affected some babu's car!

[apachelongbow]

Unscientifically designed road humps. I am not speaking of illegal ones put up by donkey brained villagers, but the ones put up by designers, especially the multiple small bumps.

Lack of banking on gradual curves. Highspeed/lowspeed curves must be well marked and properly banked to avoid accidents

Moronic painting of zebra lines on the road, the quality of the paint is suspect, causes slippage of tyres in the wet especially for two wheelers

Improper/non standard/un marked flyover starts in middle of the road, cause of major accidents because vehicles have run into the starting sidewall of a flyover.

[Googleman]

Undulations on fly-overs, where you literally get thrown off your bike when the Iron "joiner" comes.

[TheTeacher]

How about traffic lights hidden at the intersection? For instance, the traffic light for going straight on a 3+3 lane divided road will be on the extreme right side of the road, on the pavement. Unless one knows it's there, nobody will see it. Common in Chennai. CTP specializes in playing hide and seek like this. My head is all dented from slamming my palm into it.

[ampere]

Bus stops cropping at the start and end of fly-overs. This is very prominent in Bangalore and one the biggest chokers for traffic.
Even if the authorities have not planted one, yet buses start to stop at such places and it becomes a "generated" stop.

[swiftdiesel]

Unmarked speed breakers with no warning boards. Another stupidity in Chennai is unmarked barricades, especially on a highway they appear out of nowhere. Then there are speed control barricades placed late in the night that's supposedly believed to control speed. But in actuality, it has caused more deaths than help save lives.

Village punks have the habit of spreading paddy rice on the road to have them cleaned. As much as possible, avoid driving on them. If you have to drive over it, drive at snail's pace. Otherwise the dry leaves will get stuck in your intercooler or radiator and pose a fire hazard.

[guyfrmblr]

Stones left by broken vehicles on the road. I had a nasty incident on NH-48 around one and half years back when my car hit a stone which was left by some idiots on the fast lane.

The cement/mud trial left by the lorries coming out of a construction site. It causes lot of pollution and is very slippery during rainy days.

[Arvind6488]

The gap between the median near to my office at Thoraipakkam (Chennai) proves to be a very risky one. The purpose is actually meant to serve a U-turn for commuters travelling from Thoraipakkam towards Pallikaranai. This is being misused by many commuters who travel from Pallikaranai to Thoraipakkam where they enter the road which is a one-way through this gap. I have noticed many a times when I start from office that when coming out there is someone or the other driving opposite me and I have to come to the complete right side of the road to give them way to go past me. This in turn increases the risk of me being run over by vehicles coming from behind.

I have requested many of my friends not to enter the office through this route and instead drive till the Toll Gate and take the U-turn there to enter office which proves to be the right and safe way. They found it a little difficult to adapt to this practise as their regular routine to enter office was coming through the opposite direction but later on realized the risk involved and started taking the risk free way.

[abhijitvp]

I remember few years back Supreme court has asked to erase all the speed breakers in Maharashtra and then they really removed almost each and every speed breaker. But I can see most of these speed breakers are coming back. In last 3-4 months on my way to office they have added at least 10 new speed breakers. In Mumbai especially in western suburbs road surface is so bad that it’s actually a main cause for traffic and wherever there is good smooth stretch they are adding speed humps every few hundred meters.

[saket77]

There are too many examples but a dreaded example that comes to my mind right now is one that I encountered while crossing Bokaro city from Dhanbad.

Actually, while coming from Dhanbad to Ranchi, you have to cross the town of Bokaro. Now, there is a right turn, next to a petrol pump onthe Dhanbad-Bkaro section which is only meant for lighter vehicles like 2 wheelers & cars (not trucks or pick-ups) which can save upto 10 kms (as I was told) for reaching bokaro form Dhanbad.

This road is narrow, just able to accommodate 2 cars side by side & has long grown farms on both sides mostly on this stretch. Now, I was driving @ about 60KMPH as the surface is good. Then comes a blind S-curve. I slow down a bit, honk 2 times, get no reply & just as I enter the curve, I see there is a closed railway crossing and 3-4 cars are almost 'forced' to park on that blind turn. I brake hard so as to not rear-end any standing cars (not too hard as I was in total control) but the situation could have been ugly if someone drives through that curve at a higher speed and bangs in the rear of the stationery cars waiting for the railway crossing to open!

To make matters worse, there is no sign board or speed breakers. That's a place where I would advocate a speed breaker at least.

Regards,
Saket

[Percy N P]

The difference in the level of the road of two different surfaces on the same road. i.e two lanes of the road would be cement and the left lane would be tarmac and the joint between the two would normally have a difference in height of about an inch or even more. This is extremely dangerous for two wheelers when they need to switch from one lane to the other.

[sukhoi30]

I have seen this during monsoon rains. In heavy rains, the tree branches bend down partially covering the traffic signal. Especially when the red light is covered. Well, add to it that only one set of signals is functioning. Any driver who is not carefully looking at the lights, could interpret it as faulty signal and speed ahead which could turn fatal.
I think most signals in our intersections are placed wrongly or just is not sufficient for a clear view for all vehicles.

[alpha1]

How about the merging of the roads being narrower than the either of the merged road.

[mmxylorider]

Roundabouts with different number of lanes before and after. Case in point, at Hinjewadi Pune, as one proceeds from phase 2 to phase 3 at the first roundabout. If you are not careful, you might just hit the divider as you exit the roundabout in the middle lane.

Overbridges over highways - Built when the highway is 4 lane. Roads on both sides later widened to 6 lanes, but the bottleneck will persist.

Speedbreakers when you are about to climb a flyover. Don't see much these days, but there were a few in Mumbai earlier.

Any road that has been resurfaced multiple times that the shoulder is few inches below road surface. Quite difficult to get onto the road on a two-wheeler.