THE CRAPBOOK

In India ’left’ is right, although 95% of the drivers on road fail to realize that. I have written about traffic earlier on how lucky I am to reach office well dressed and alive !

I was reading through some old threads on www.team-bhp.com when I saw this “If the left indicator blinks, it means you can’t overtake and there’s oncoming traffic while thr ‘right’ indicator means, go ahead”

well well well. Now I know why the 95% of vehicles on the road drive this crazy.

Now lets get to the bottom of this, when you give a left indicator you are not indicating or directing anyone to overtake, roll over, brake or anything. You are signalling the rest of the drivers that YOU are turning to the left ! Well that would be the simple meaning of an indicator.

So when you signal left, the car behind you can overtake you since you are moving to the left lane(if there is one) or to the side of the road. So it can be treated as a signal to overtake, although it isn’t !!!

When you indicate to the right, it means that YOU are going to move to the right lane or turn right at the next junction depending on the lane you are in ! It does not indicate that the vehicle behind you cannot overtake ! Its common sense and traffic ethics for the car behind you NOT to overtake when you are going to turn right !

The rules/ethics were answered/explained in the thread itself, but I am surprised to see many confused on this simple signalling thing. Its very simple, an indicator would convey on where YOU are going ,  you don’t tell anyone else on what THEY can /supposed (to) do. Although its a judgement that the vehicle behind you, who should take the decision to overtake.

Indicators are not fancy yellow lights which are used in old Malayalam/Hindi movies during dance sequences to get the disco light effects. Its an indicator to save lives!

Now for some quick poll (8 questions) on some basic traffic rules/ethics. Please don’t choose the answer that you think is right, but choose the one which you actually follow.

Okay, it may seem like a usual thing that you ‘bump’ into when you travel on road. But too many is too much !

The road (15 km route) that I take everyday in Bangalore to and from office has around 50-60 humps. I am thrown around 50*2=100 times every single day. Searching for humps on the internet I found that there is a group which actually discuss the pros and cons about it.

I guess the reason why we have so many humps in Bangalore would be to discipline the drivers who drive too fast/do not stop at signal(so a hump at every signal would atleast slow them down !!! ) .

The road humps at the signals slow down the traffic, also the humps in Bangalore are too high that you need to stop your vehicle(if it’s a car) and maneuver it very slowly so that you don’t scratch the bottom of the car.  The humps are also reason for many traffic accidents involving two wheelers as many humps are not marked and there are no signs warning of a road hump.

This also reminded me of a highway stretch in Kerala which was constructed by a Malaysian company. The stretch had warning signs 100mts before a road hump and the humps were properly marked, helping drivers during night drives.

I wonder why we have so many humps in Bangalore, aren’t there any other alternatives to control/discipline traffic int the city?

Got this as a forward. (You might have already seen this but its worth a laugh)