22nd June 2010, 17:48
| #121 |
| Senior - BHPian  Join Date: Oct 2009 Location: City of seven islands.
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22nd June 2010, 19:09
| #122 |
| BHPian  | Interesting thread & very relevant to TBHP  Immediately reminds me of the FFE misunderstanding thread. Have had numerous instances of this within city limits & also on the now open sea-link. The problem is, forget overtaking, just the sound of a ffe gets morons all excited. Forget when your enjoying your ffe in the night (keeping safety in mind ofcourse), even in regular driving people enjoy trying to race or overtake you & feel "Bah, i showed him! Took him on in a stock car & left him in the dust" Being & looking young doesnt help either as even if you are driving responsibly & someone older acts like a fool, people around you tend to blame "these young & rash drivers in modded cars" On the other side of the coin (and i mean the true side), apart from young rowdies (who you can easily spot), its the mature drivers who ive noticed indulge in such things. Heck, have seen so many times, just because of a slight sound (not revving, but regular driving with an ffe), all types of cars engage in the "Im faster than you, twerp" syndrome. As mentioned by majority in this thread. I follow one rule in my head: Please go ahead and feel good about your driving & your car, ive modified my car not for racing, but to fuel a passion. On a racetrack, yes, i would accept your foolhardy behaviour, but on the streets, i think the apt line is "Real power doesnt need to be shown, it can be understood by observing the sensibilty that prevails" Last edited by Xehaust : 22nd June 2010 at 19:10. |
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23rd June 2010, 14:19
| #123 | |
| Team-BHP Support   | @ Xehaust : Enjoyed reading your post. Know why Sanjay Dutt let go of his Harley? Because he couldn't ever enjoy a ride, without having all the RX100s trying to race him  Quote:
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23rd June 2010, 15:36
| #124 |
| BHPian  Join Date: May 2009 Location: Mumbai
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23rd June 2010, 15:56
| #125 |
| Senior - BHPian  | |
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23rd June 2010, 16:14
| #126 | |
| BHPian Join Date: May 2009 Location: Bombay
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| @holysmoke - What you can do to avoid such situations: 1. Keep at least 1 to 1 1/2 car lengths away from the vehicle in front of you. When you want to overtake, move just very slightly out (onto the other side of the road). Ensure 3/4 of your car is still behind the vehicle in front of you. Doing so gives you sufficient visibility on coming traffic. If doing so does not give you complete visibility, abort the move. Even the slightest bend where you know you don't have full visibility, always abort the overtaking. 2. Use indicators along with hand gestures if necessary. I have noticed over the many years of driving that most people become very cooperative if you wave them a hand along with your car indicators. In the US, it is common to drive in a group of 2 or more cars, each car taking the lead for say 100 odd km. and the rest following the leader. This makes one person focus on the job for that period of time rather that everyone doing so. And this is all done with no earlier communication or even knowing who the other person is. Camaraderie on our roads is not easy to buy, but I think we are getting much better at it. Drive Safe! Quote:
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23rd June 2010, 17:04
| #127 | |
| BANNED Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Bangalore
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23rd June 2010, 18:46
| #128 | |
| BHPian | Quote:
And Rx100's racing him  Id rather have kept the Harley for entertainment purposes. Whenever in need of some cheering up, take out the Harley & see people around you become monkeys on hot bricks  | |
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1st July 2010, 17:08
| #129 | |
| BHPian Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: Bangalore/Hyderabad
Posts: 257
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| Quote:
 even if you are keeping a steady speed and the morons around you altering their speed giving a illusion that you are trying to race them but they are beating you to it .Anyways we are in a land of kings and Nawabs and Emperor's Here's an article, no doubt controversial, but summarises most of our irrational behaviour. No offence meant to anyone and above all I am Indian who is susceptible to these nuances. And please read this in the contect and spirit in which this is shared[FONT=Verdana]Some characteristics unite Indians. The most visible is our opportunism Why dont we worship Brahma? We know he's part of the Hindu trinity as the creator, but we worship Vishnu, manager of the cosmos, and Shiva, its eventual destroyer. The answer lies not in religion, but in culture. But in what way does our religion shape our culture? An interesting thing to know is this: Has our culture shaped our faith or has our faith shaped our culture? I cannot say. To return to the question we started with: Why is Brahma not worshipped? The answer is obvious: He has nothing to offer us. What he could do for us, create the universe, he already has. There is no gain in petitioning him now. What explains the behaviour of Indians? What explains the anarchy of our cities? To find out, we must ask how our behaviour is different. One good way to judge a society is to see it in motion. On the road, we observe the opportunism in the behaviour of the Indian driver. Where traffic halts on one side of the road in India, motorists will encroach the oncoming side because there is space available there. If that leads to both sides being blocked, that is fine, as long as we maintain our advantage over people behind us or next to us. This is because the other man cannot be trusted to stay in his place. The Indian's instinct is to jump the traffic light if he is convinced that the signal is not policed. If he gets flagged down by the police, his instinct is to bolt. In an accident, his instinct is to flee. Fatal motoring cases in India are a grim record of how the driver ran over people and drove away. We show the pattern of what is called a Hobbesian society: one in which there is low trust between people. This instinct of me-versus-the- world leads to irrational behaviour, demonstrated when Indians board flights. We form a mob at the entrance, and as the flight is announced, scramble for the plane even though all tickets are numbered. Airlines modify their boarding announcements for Indians taking international flights. Our opportunism necessarily means that we do not understand collective good. Indians will litter if they are not policed. Someone else will always pick up the rubbish we throw. Thailand's toilets are used by as many people as India's toilets are, but they are likely to be not just clean but spotless. This is because thats how the users leave them, not the cleaners. The Indians reluctance to embrace collective good hurts his state. A study of income-tax compliance between 1965 and 1993 in India (Elsevier Science/Das- Gupta, Lahiri and Mookherjee) concluded that declining assessment intensity had a significant negative effect on compliance, while traditional enforcement tools (searches, penalties and prosecution activity) had only a limited effect on Indians. The authors puzzled over the fact that India income tax performance (was) below the average of countries with similar GDP per capita We do not think stealing from the state is a bad thing, and our ambiguity extends to corruption, which also we do not view in absolute terms. Political parties in India understand this and corruption is not an issue in Indian politics. Politicians who are demonstrably corrupt, recorded on camera taking a bribe or saying appalling things, or convicted by a court, can hold legitimate hope of a comeback unthinkable in the West. The opportunist is necessarily good at adapting, and that explains the success of Indians abroad. We can follow someone elses rules well, even if we cant enforce them at home ourselves. The Indian in the US is peerless at the Spelling Bee because the formula of committing things to memory, which in India passes for knowledge, comes naturally to him. But this talent for adapting and memorizing is not the same as a talent for creation. The question is: Why are we opportunists? In his great work Crowds and Power, Elias Canetti observed that the rewards religions promised their faithful were all far off, in the afterlife. This is because a short goal would demand demonstration from god and create sceptics instead of believers. There is an exception to this in Hinduism. Hinduism is not about the other world. There is no afterlife in Hinduism and rebirth is always on earth. The goal is to be released entirely and our death rites and beliefs -- funeral in Kashi -- seek freedom from rebirth. Christianity and Islam are about how to enter heaven; Hinduism is about how not to return to earth, because its a rotten place. Naipaul opens his finest novel with the words "The world is what it is", and Wittgenstein "The world is all that is the case" opens his Tractatus similarly. Hinduism recognizes that the world is irredeemable: It is what it is. Perhaps this is where the Hindu gets his world view -- which is zero-sum -- from. We might say that he takes the pessimistic view of society and of his fellow man. But why? The Hindu devotee's relationship with god is transactional: I give you this, you give me that. God must be petitioned and placated to swing the universe's blessings towards you. God gives you something not through the miracle, and this is what makes Hinduism different, but by swinging that something away from someone else. This is the primary lesson of the Vedic fire sacrifice. There is no benefit to one without loss to another. Religion is about bending god's influence towards you through pleas, and appeasement, through offerings. Society has no role in your advancement and there is no reason to give back to it (in any way, including leaving the toilets clean behind you) because it hasn't given you anything in the first place. That is why Indian industrialists are not philanthropists. Rockefeller always gave a tenth of his earnings to the Church, and then donated hundreds of millions, fighting hookworm and educating black women. Bill Gates gave $25 billion (around Rs1.2 trillion), and his cause is fighting malaria, which does not even affect Americans. Warren Buffett gave away $30 billion, almost his entire fortune. Andrew Carnegie built 2,500 libraries. Dhirubhai Ambani International School has annual fees starting at Rs47,500 (with a Rs 24,000 admission fee) and Mukesh Ambani's daughter was made head girl. [/FONT] | |
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1st July 2010, 17:52
| #130 |
| Senior - BHPian  | |
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1st July 2010, 18:23
| #131 |
| Senior - BHPian Join Date: Oct 2009 Location: City of seven islands.
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1st July 2010, 20:12
| #132 | |
| BHPian  Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: Trivandrum
Posts: 425
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| Quote:
 . Very well said. The weakest part in a car is the nut behind the wheel (the breathing one) and it is best not to interfere with them. As for incidents from my part, have had a few two of which I will share: - Once while driving from Trivandrum to Hyderabad, we had reached a stretch of road between Eranakulam and Thrishur which was under construction. It was a two lane road and one lane was closed for work while the other was very rough with gravel strewn all over it and full of pot holes. Traffic was being regulated in a one way manner. So I slow down to around 20km/hr when this Qualis comes right behind me at around 80km/hr honking and lights flashing. What could I do, I could not speed up as I cared for my car and I had absolutely no place to let them over take (the side of the road was a huge ditch). So I continued until the stretch was over, beyond which I moved to the side and let me pass. He passes me, slows down to my speed, winds the window down looks to my side and gives me the finger. And then BANG. He had a head on collision with an auto coming in the opposite direction which he did not see because he was busy looking at me. We stopped to help and he did try to put the blame on us seeing that my car was an AP registraion. But once we started talking back in Malayalam and the folks behind us also stopped and took our side, he kept quite. The worst part was that his car was a company owned car and he was just a worker transporting he car from Cochin to Calicut. Wonder how his company took it. - Second was something similar. We were doing around 100 when an Alto came up behind us. I was in the middle lane (3 lanes to one side) and thought that he would overtake from the right. But he did not, just kept behind me honking. So I roll down my window and give him the sign to pass which he does not. I move to the left lane but had speeded up a bit. The Alto overtakes and what happens next surprises me. He cuts in front of me and brakes - all in one motion. His car can't take it and severs and skid. Poor guy does not know what to do and ends up moving to the right most lane and hits the divider where he stops. We stop and help him and his wife from the car - both very dazed but unhurt. His wife is crying while he just sits on the divider and stares at the road. My wife and I move them off the road and then push their car to the side. A few more folks stop and help. Half an hour later, we hail a passing cab for him and send him on his way home. | |
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1st July 2010, 20:39
| #133 |
| BHPian Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Bangalore / Toronto, Canada
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1st July 2010, 20:39
| #134 |
| BHPian  | |
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1st July 2010, 21:02
| #135 |
| Distinguished - BHPian   | |
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