Kensray.com

Traffic

The absolute biggest difference between Canada and India was the traffic! Not only are there a lot more cars on the road but they’re sharing the road with people on bicycles, on motorbikes, on scooters, in rickshaws (driven like bicycles using peddles), rickshaws (motorized, like motorcycles), sometimes even cows, buffaloes, ocassionally some goats and sheep, pedestrians, buses, trucks, tractors and so on. This is just what comes to my mind right now.

Mind you, on highways you are not likely to find any animals but traffic is still a huuuuuuge problem.

All the roads are perfectly marked with lanes but you soon realize that they’re just there for show. If there is room on the road, someone will fill it up, someone will squeeze in there. On a normal 3 lane road, there are at least 5 cars standing side by side with maybe a few scooters or motorcycles filling the space in between the cars!

I have never in my life seen horns used as much as I did in a few days in India! That’s practically the only way to let people know in the front that you’re coming behind them.

People there have their own rules. If you honk your horn, majority of the time people in front will let you pass. There’s barely 2-3 feet of space in between cars front and back!

I thought it was not a big deal since traffic speed was barely 20 km/h but even when we got on the highway with speeds easily approaching or exceeding 100km/h, people were still driving in the same way! Their reflexes were amazing! I did not even witness one major accident even with people driving like this.

Imagine driving at 100km/h with only 3 feet of space between you and the car in front and then barely 3-4 feet between you and cars around you! But people drive like that! They swerve in and out of lanes with ease!

Majority of the cars there are smaller cars though with manual transmissions. A Honda Civic is considered a large car there. But I saw every single type of car there, from cheapest to the most expensive models!

You are not allowed to talk on cell phones while driving, nor are you allowed to drive without a seat belt as you do get ticketed/fined! And people seemed to obey these rules!

A few of my relatives were really amazing drivers. They would eat, talk on phone, take notes, drive a manual car, and still at high speeds while merging in and out of different lanes! And they looked quite normal, just like you and me! Wolves in sheep clothing I tell you!!

Once I took a bus and even that was swerving through traffic same way a much smaller car would. On my left was a truck full of people going for some parade. There was about 1 foot of distance between these two. At one point the bus I was in hit the truck so they got stuck side to side. Now on the road we were being driven like that. A bus stuck to the truck! Finally, they got unstuck,and the truck driver swore loudly for a few minutes at the bus driver and left, still being driven at a decent speed! If that was here, we would have police, ambulance, fire trucks and it would stop all traffic for a long time!

I see here people getting upset if knicked by another car’s doors in the parking lot and in India you can’t find a car without any knicks or dents!

Many times I saw the husband driving a scooter, a kid standing in front (space between front seat and handle), kid sitting behind him, wife sitting behind the kid (old fashioned way with both legs on one side) and another kid in her lap! Crazy and dangerous!

Mind you a lot of people on scooters and motorcycles are killed each year due to accidents! I myself have lost a lot of relatives because of a truck and a scooter accident!

I was riding on a motorcycle or a scooter a lot of times as well and that was scary! A lot of streets are extremely narrow, barely 10 feet and people sometimes squeeze their cars in there as well! Imagine you’re on a scooter and a car is approaching you from the other side and you can’t pass each other, so you stop and pull your scooter to the extreme left, leaning against the wall of the house and the car thus passes, only then you proceed!

I would have loved to drive in India as I could drive without the fear of getting caught for swerving through traffic! But I didn’t want to take a chance of wrecking someone else’s car.

Remember steering wheels are on the right side in the vehicles and people drive on the left side of the road, totally opposite to the way we drive here in Canada.

But even with all this crazyness I was never afraid in any vehicle and actually quite enjoyed my rides!

Then I came back here to Canada, my dad picked me up in an old Toyota Camry. I felt like I was in a luxury car! Soooo roomy and soooo quiet! No one honking any horns and everyone following the lane markings on the road! For a while it was totally incomprehensible! I couldn’t believe the difference!

But when all is said and done, I was glad to be back on Canadian roads!