[hajaar]

Originally Posted by Raghav_K

I was thinking the overall arrogance and egoistic attitude of the two and four wheelers has been increasing for the past year.

Glad that I'm not the only one with such thoughts.

Or maybe it's because we have more nuts on the road every year :-)

This happened yesterday to me. I was chugging along in the fast lane at 90, in the Chennai Bypass road, two lorries were in the middle lane, with some distance between each other. When I was beginning to overtake the second lorry, a small car, an Maruti 800, comes behind me and repeatedly honks, goes to the slow lane in left, overtakes the lorry, diagonally zips to the fast lane, overtakes the lorry in front, and slowed down to 60 in the fast lane trying to block me. I for a second thought I would do the same to him, then I decided I don't care, shifted to the middle lane, and slowed down to 50. Probably the lack of response from me, pissed him off so he took speed again and drove away.

I find it extremely difficult to keep my cool nowadays when I am tailgated or cut-off. The issue is that earlier only autos and taxi guys used to do it but nowadays two-wheelers, private car owners, every one else does it.

Coming to think of it, I think the autos are probably among the better behaved vehicles on the road today.

[Thad E Ginathom]

I have respect for auto drivers. They may push, shove, nip and generally annoy, but they understand how traffic works. Sometimes they even jump out to sort a jam with some skilful directing. Many of them probably have less education than a lot of other road users, but they are much more intelligent.

[supremeBaleno]

Yesterday around 8PM am in a colleague's car at Sholinganallur signal, waiting for light to turn green to go towards Siruseri side. We are in the middle lane, there is a car to our left, but ahead of us (it's rear-bumper in line with our front bumper). A biker is behind said car. Light turns green, my colleague moves forward, not expecting the biker to move diagonally onto front of us. He brakes, but already contact has been made with the bike and the biker is yelling at us.

This surprises us no end because he was the one who rode wrongly, but then we understand that he is yelling that his leg is under the car's wheels. We slowly reverse so that he can extricate his leg. I walk out to survey the damage (light paint scrape on left side) and ask the biker why the hell he is trying such stupid stunts that could get him killed. His reply, "I did not expect the other car to brake". Ask him to avoid getting killed - he admits mistake and pushes the bike to the kerb. No helmet on him either.

[Raghav_K]

^ The rules I rigorously follow after being rear ended once in a Signal in Chennai.

1. Start slowing down if I will be crossing the signal within the last 1-4 second, and wait for the signal instead.

2. Never be the first person to wait in the signal. Drastically decreases your chances of being rear ended, by the speeding vehicle trying to cross the signal in the last second. Reduces the chances of being scraped by the Two Wheeler who will overtake you from the side and will come and wait in front of you. No pressure to keep watching the signal :P

3. Always wait for the potential nuts on either side to move first. Prevents banging the ones trying to cut from right to left and from left to right.

Yes I will be late by few minutes, but am sure this saves me money in the long run

[Thad E Ginathom]

Not so much about safety, but:

Never speed away from "poll position" at a signal. There may be a cop with a speed camera the other side of the junction.

I learnt this one the hard way in London, getting the only black mark I ever had on my licence.

[ThePunter]

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom

Not so much about safety, but:

Never speed away from "poll position" at a signal. There may be a cop with a speed camera the other side of the junction.

I learnt this one the hard way in London, getting the only black mark I ever had on my licence.

I guess you meant "pole position"


just curious: - what was the speed limit for to be caught by a camera - revving away from 'standstill'

[supremeBaleno]

I had posted this in the "Accidents in India" thread. Re-posting here incase someone has more info on how this happened :

An accident happened just now at Mettukuppam bus-stop on OMR. Not sure of the sequence of events, but there is a beige/golden Verna (Fluidic) parked with quite some extensive damage at the front (windshield broken, passenger airbag deployed, could not see driver airbag from other side of the road) and also damage all along the right-side of the car + rear RHS lights broken.
A water tanker was parked in front of it, which seems to be related to the accident. Cops were there enquiring. So was an ambulance - so maybe serious injuries.

Possibly the Verna was trying to overtake from right, when the tanker also moved to the right, Verna hit the median. Or it tried to overtake from the left and tanker side-swiped it.

[Thad E Ginathom]

Originally Posted by ThePunter

I guess you meant "pole position"

I stopped, thought ...and got it wrong. What a mistake to make on a motoring forum!

just curious: - what was the speed limit for to be caught by a camera - revving away from 'standstill'

A street, in London, with no other limit stated, would be 30MPH. I think I revved up to 45MPH. In all practical terms, it might have said to have been safe, on a wide, major road --- but not legal.

In the unlikely event of anybody being interested, it was the Mile End Road (A11) in E. London, at the Grove Road junction.

[pisthpeeps]

Saw lot of checking today on my way to office around noon. Cops were particularly stopping goods carriers - particularly smaller ones and checking them. Not sure if anything like Operation Amla is going on today.

[supremeBaleno]

Not sure if you guys noticed the hike in toll-charges on OMR ? It is now Rs22 (one-way), Rs40 (2-way) and IIRC Rs60 for a full-day-multiple-entry-exit pass.

With the move to Sholinganallur some months ago, my commute no longer involves a toll-booth enroute. So I am not sure when this came into effect - happened to notice this yesterday at the Perungudi toll while coming to office via MTC.

[joecherian]

Originally Posted by supremeBaleno

Not sure if you guys noticed the hike in toll-charges on OMR ? It is Rs22 (one-way), Rs40 (2-way) and IIRC Rs60 for a full-day-multiple-entry-exit pass.

With the move to Sholinganallur some months ago, my commute no longer involves a toll-booth enroute. So I am not sure when this came into effect - happened to notice this yesterday at the Perungudi toll while coming to office via MTC.

this is from July 1. Not sure what was the reason for this increase (other than some service road related works that I am seeing now a days)

[supremeBaleno]

The service roads are a mess with the paved-blocks getting damaged due to the weight of heavy vehicles (water/sewage tankers etc). They do some repairing, which promptly gets damaged again - maybe it would have been better to have this also as tarred road.

BTW, traffic flows in both directions on the service roads, instead of being one-way, which I think is the correct way. But with no one enforcing this, people have started thinking of this as 'normal' - have folks in the office who actually say that there is nothing wrong in going the wrong way on service roads ie. service-roads are allowed to have bi-directional traffic.

[binand]

Originally Posted by supremeBaleno

BTW, traffic flows in both directions on the service roads, instead of being one-way, which I think is the correct way. But with no one enforcing this, people have started thinking of this as 'normal' - have folks in the office who actually say that there is nothing wrong in going the wrong way on service roads ie. service-roads are allowed to have bi-directional traffic.

NHAI's 75-metre road widening plan involves bi-directional service roads on both sides of dual carriageway roads. Here in Bangalore too (primarily talking of the ORR) the service roads are generally bi-directional.

I think that is the right way to do it.

In the OMR/Chennai context, is there signage that indicates the service road is one-way only?

[supremeBaleno]

^^^There is no signage indicating either way - atleast none that I have seen.

BTW, why do you say that it is the right way ? In my experience on OMR, we run into traffic-blocks (at narrow sections where 2 vehicles cannot pass abreast). Plus the other serious issue of possible accidents when there are bikes/cars coming at hi-speed in the "wrong' direction and getting in the way of someone who is taking a correct left from main lane into the service lane.

[binand]

Originally Posted by supremeBaleno

BTW, why do you say that it is the right way ? In my experience on OMR, we run into traffic-blocks (at narrow sections where 2 vehicles cannot pass abreast). Plus the other serious issue of possible accidents when there are bikes/cars coming at hi-speed in the "wrong' direction and getting in the way of someone who is taking a correct left from main lane into the service lane.

The issues you point out are design problems. The purpose of service roads is to take off local, slow moving traffic from the main carriageways so that long-distance traffic can zip through at near (or beyond, as the case is in India) speed limit. If you allow that local traffic only in one direction you don't achieve anything by having the service road, in the first place - the traffic going the other way will still need to take the main carriageway creating hazards there.