Auto-Rickshaws, Accidents and Assholes – II
Last week, I touched upon the surface of the subject that was Auto-Rickshaws. Admittedly, the problem of auto-rickshaws is a big one, however, it is just half the problem, and hence, only one side of this ugly coin I found on the road. It is now time to see the other half:
The rest of the drivers!
I would like to focus on providing a solution to our persistent road troubles but first we must be aware of the problem. So I will outline the problem in short:
Aargh!
Right. Now let’s focus on the solution.
In the previous article I outlined one possible solution being removal of auto-rickshaws. The thing is, however, it is not as simple as it sounds. The only way people will stop using the troublesome, yet relatively convenient vehicles is when the public transportation systems are good and reliable, which they just aren’t. Using large transport vehicles that run on cleaner diesel fuel with better engines will solve most of our problems, but LTV’s also require large smooth roads and a good, well-followed timetable. That brings up the problem of time.
Indians seem to have some deep-rooted issues with time. They just don’t care about it; about other people’s time, or even their own. Punctuality is as wide-spread as dodos. And when you apply that to the bus timetable, you might as well throw it away.
Buses have their own set of problems. They are difficult to navigate through a river of two million smaller vehicles flitting about them like a school of busy fish, and they are highly susceptible to stones, which brings up the problem of the mob.
Every now and again, somewhere in Pune, someone collides into or is hit by a bus. Every now and then, someone dies in that manner. Every time that happens, someone else invariably gets hurt. And the reason for that is the mob. Traffic is never really a mob until someone is hit by a bus. Then they start pelting stones at the bus, hurting the driver, the passenger, the people around the bus; they set fire to it and start fighting among themselves like a bunch of drunken monkeys. In all this Stone Age savagery, the people who were hit by the bus are quite forgotten.
Whose loss is the destruction of a public transport bus? The bus driver’s? The transportation department? No, it’s a loss of the people. But a mob, which is just a bunch of brain dead morons, doesn’t realize that.
The problem of lack of good road infrastructure can be solved with a lot of money, which India doesn’t have except in the pockets of corrupt politicians which they will use to build mansions and statues in their own image but not to improve roads.
Auto-rickshaws and buses aren’t the only troubles either. There are two wheelers- the most numerous type of vehicle on the streets of Pune- that contribute considerably to the problem. They pollute a lot; they fill the cracks in the traffic like water does a glass filled with pebbles; they slip through the gaps, touching, scratching, scraping cars; they go over the footpaths and pedestrians just to be a little in front at a signal; they cut in front of cars and other bikers scaring the life out of scared drivers; and it’s so easy to break traffic rules on a two wheeler. While car pooling as a solution to the biker problem has its benefits, it too has its own set of problems. It’s not as convenient. Everyone in the pool is dependent on each other’s timings. Of course, it might work in India since no one cares about time, but I would like to believe otherwise.
All these troubles aren’t the end of it, unfortunately. Car drivers aren’t saints. Highly educated yuppies with cars aren’t necessarily literate when it comes to driving. Which brings us to the final problem and the simplest, workable solution to it.
It is clear that everyone in Pune drives like tosspots. It doesn’t matter if it is a bus or a truck, a car or an auto-rickshaw, a cycle or motor-cycle, or a bullock-cart or hand-cart or pedestrians, everyone drives like idiots. Lane discipline is a completely foreign concept to most people in Pune. The solution is simple. We can’t get certain people off the lanes, but certainly lane discipline can be gotten into them. They must be taught lane discipline, because you see, if only a few people try to follow it, it doesn’t work, but if only a few try to break it, they will suffer. In short, this means that the problem lies entirely with the licensing office, the RTO.
In Pune, it takes a person about fifty metres of driving to get a licence. They don’t need lane discipline; they don’t need road sense; just the ability to drive fifty metres on an empty road. That’s how I got my license, that’s how everyone I know got a license. And that is a big problem. But now the solution is at hand. I am already following it. All you have to do is to find out what lane discipline means, and follow it. If everyone starts following it, driving on the streets of Pune will be much more pleasurable than it is today.
—
Jaideep Ranade
