[YaeJay]

If we all can obey the rules, where is the need to enforce anything? An educated jaywalker with his headphones who is having some serious conversation, jumping across the median, say around Tidel park is as guilty as any share auto stopping abrubtly to drop or pick up a customer, usually at some signal thats green or at some junction and the customer? most of them educated as well, going to their little table with a computer.

This is Chennai. Where we do see green when its red. This is Chennai, where all that matters is, everything about me, my family,us.

Funny thing is it used to be way better in the 90z.

[TwentyDeewar]

Oh what a mess is the taramani-velachery road!!!!

I stay in perungudi, and normally take the OMR -> 200 feet road to get to office, preferring to pay the toll. Today, I had to drop a friend at velachery, so decided to brave the taramani road and got awarded with scratches on my rear bumper.

The stretch of road till TCS has only two lanes for both sides of traffic owing to one side of the road being completely dug up. This stretch is especially chaotic during office hours. Anyway, a biker coming from the opposite side decides to suddenly take a right turn into one of the bylanes, and comes directly in my path. I screech to a halt, and while I am going through with the routine of throwing the biker a dirty look, a luna from behind crashes into my bumper. Both bikers go on with life without a bother.

This is my second incident on the same stretch, the first was scary and happened a year or so back. A crazy dude on a kinetic honda in front of me kept swerving to the right (in the face of oncoming traffic) to overtake the car in front. During one of his attempts he sees a bus coming from the opposite side, and takes evasive action towards his left. He unfortunately hits the rear bumper of the car in front and comes crashing down on the road directly in my path. I step on my brakes and pray. I literally stopped a few inches from his face. What does the guy do? He gets up, picks up his scooter, smiles at me and zooms off.

What is scary is the nonchalance of the bikers in both the cases. Its as if they believe that they are immortal. Can someone stuff some sense into these guys??

[srikanthns]

Originally Posted by TwentyDeewar

What is scary is the nonchalance of the bikers in both the cases. Its as if they believe that they are immortal. Can someone stuff some sense into these guys??

Yes, it seems as though these have a death wish as a whole community. After graduating to Car from bike about 5 years back, I thought only trivandrum bikers and pedestrians have a death wish. Now it seems a national affliction!

[iamswift]

What is with the blockades all over the city lately? Not that it was not present earlier - but now the current placement is more aggressive and sheer stupidity.

I can see these placed (sometimes two in a stretch) right in the middle of the road effectively reducing four lane to just two. Not helping the flow at all.
This type is seen at regular intervals in Jawaharlal Nehru road from Kathipara till Ashok-Nagar.

Near ESI, one blockade placed on left most lane and another on right most just before KK-nagar turn. Turn to KK-nagar will have vehicles waiting for road to be free from on-coming vehicles. The waiting vehicles queue obviously blocks the single lane and the straight going vehicles are to wait.
This has become quite a jam today.

Another type is check-post kind-of. A three lane road reduced to single lane at some point by placing blockades in left most lane and another at right most lane which are separated around 10 meters. These were usually in selected places like police check-post but now placed in several roads.

Any new traffic commissioner taken charge and wants to prove his brilliance?

[supremeBaleno]

^^^Yesterday drove on the Kathipara Ashok Nagar stretch after a long time and voila as I drive down the flyover, the old big barricade is back and in the middle. Look through all mirrors to see whether to drive around it from the left or right based on traffic behind. And then I know intuitively that the other barricades along the way would have also been placed haphazardly.

But @iamswift, this is not due to a new top-cop taking over or anything. This is just the cops testing your driving skills, especially how quickly you can detect and evade obstacles, placed randomly on the tarmac. It is for your own benefit to sharpen your driving ability.

Has been there for ages now and will be there in the future too. No point discussing this because I doubt the powers-up-there understand the risk due to these.

[Arch-Angel]

Why are chennai's bikers driving like maniacs all of a sudden? It was alright a few months back and now it seems they just love to zoom in between and suddenly brake when there is no room for them to maneuver. They suddenly scorn and look as though i committed a sin by braking since an equally idiotic car driver cut me off.

This seems to be their routine:

Time: 8:00AM - Eat breakfast
Time: 8:30AM - Get ready, place brain in jar and keep it near the favourite idol in the pooja room.
Time: 8:45AM - Go onto the road and drive like a maniac.
Time: 9:15AM - Reach office with a lot of luck and prayers from fellow well mannered motorists.

[Thad E Ginathom]

All of a sudden? It has been my complaint since I started driving here that two wheels often equals no brain, and everybody else has to take complete responsibility for keeping these people alive.

[Gansan]

Riders without license land parents in trouble.

Police of Chidambaram town on Wednesday booked twenty parents under section 5 of the MV Act for allowing their wards to ride bikes without a driving licence. The section states "owner not to allow any person to drive the vehicle without a driving license". Spot checks were carried out on the roads. Whenever the riders were found not to have a license, rider and bike were taken to the police station where the bikes were seized. The youngsters were asked to bring their parents to collect their bikes. When the parents arrived, they were booked.

- The Indian Express.

[saadat1992]

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom

All of a sudden? It has been my complaint since I started driving here that two wheels often equals no brain, and everybody else has to take complete responsibility for keeping these people alive.

Two wheelers are such a pain!
There's not even a single day where i come home without having a heated argument with a two wheeler rider. These guys think they can do anything just because their vehicle is easy to maneuver around in the city but, they dont understand that it's the bigger Vehicle's driver who is getting a heart attack everytime they cut across randomly.
These heart in the mouth moments are very common after 10pm when the roads open up and these youngsters in their powerful mobikes try to pull off the stunts that professionals do in their superbikes.

[VW2010]

You have to get patient. You cannot lose your cool even if they hit your car or scratched it. Remember you cannot do anything once something has happened. And the law will not protect you for it will view it as you hitting the bike than other way around. Listen to good music and drive safe.


And remember its exactly mutual a feeling from bikers who think drivers inside a car think they are f1 or go cart drivers. And the impact of worst case scenario is worse on the biker than us in car.


You will see more bikers each day doing this and you will feel good to start ignoring.

[srikanthns]

Originally Posted by Arch-Angel

Time: 9:15AM - Reach office with a lot of luck and prayers from fellow well mannered motorists.

I am convinced that the motorists (both two and four wheelers) reach their destinations safely only because of the munificence of the fellow motorists!

[callvvijay]

This happened today (Friday) morning in front of Tidel Park. I work in Tidel and was just entering the campus. To enter Tidel, one will have to drive through the side-lane behind the Tidel bus stop (opp. to Thiruvanmiyur MRTS station). This lane is very narrow (that's why its a lane., if not it would have been a street/road :P)

Luckily, I was not at the receiving end. All this happened just behind me and I was seeing this in my rear-view mirror.

There was an i10 which was coming just behind me and as I entered the lane, one furious fellow in his Zen overtook the i10. Yes., he overtook the i10 in this small narrow stretch where two cars cannot even pass that easily.

By the time his overtaking endeavor was getting over, we had reached the Tidel entrance and this guy cuts the i10 across and enters Tidel just behind me. I was damn irritated on this guy and could see the i10 stopping in front of Tidel and talking with the Tidel authority/security folks about this Zen's behavior.

I proceed to my parking slot and park my car, and this Zen follows me and parks near to me. Getting down from my car, I directly went-approached him and told in polite words that what he did was not right. He was telling me that the i10 guy was not letting him to proceed and that's why he had to do that. I gave him some piece of my mind - all in polite words and made a move. I was really happy that I told what I felt.

I have also seen the same Zen fellow driving the same way a month or so back. I told this also to him.

My dad used to say this - "There is a difference between an educated person and a literate person". I could only think of that. Working in Tidel doesn't mean that you are educated!

[iamswift]

Nice to see all drivers having their seat belt on today morning.
I hope the authorities won't lose interest after a while in implementing the mandatory seat belt directive.

[sjcherian]

Did anyone notice that the first two of the stupid barricades and barrels of sand on OMR from SRP to Kandanchavadi were knocked down. Was wondering what vehicle could have done that and still managed to get away unscathed ? Can only think of some truck doing it.

[supremeBaleno]

Only a truck can get away with that. BTW, I noticed some other such barricades (the metal ones) that had been knocked down with the barricade's metal-legs towards the traffic - could get ugly if some bike got caught in it.