Around the Horns of India

eeeeee! .... Tootle, tootle, tootle ...... honk, honk - The sounds of Bangalore traffic! The horn in India seems like an additional appendage- drivers seem to drive with at least one finger poised to tap the horn or hold it down for a good long blast whenever another vehicle fails to move fast enough or move over. Of course, in dense traffic, the horns are honking, or tooting all around you as each driver tries to warn others of his presence nearby. Some horns sound a bit sickly, while others seem a bit too robust. Some seem like they were mean just to alert you to their presence, while others seem clearly aimed at asking you to get out of their way! Our driver says that the latter types are not legal, but no one ever gets fined for having them. Joseph is an aggressive driver. He is very good too. He has been driving in Bangalore for many years and knows most of the tricks. He uses the horn on our car less than many drivers, but more than some too. He flashes the headlights more than most drivers. He says that flashing headlights is the legal way for telling oncoming traffic that you want to take priority when passing a blocking vehicle. But, it seems to be ignored more than half the time.
We have been told that if we think the traffic is bad now, then we should have seen it about 5 years ago! Apparently, numerous experiments have been tried over the past 5 years to try to find a way for the traffic to move better. Most roads in the city center are now one-way traffic- or at least as one way as it ever gets in India. (It is not at all unusual to find vehicles going the wrong way.) This has helped ease the flow- apparently, but it is still pretty bad. The combination of bad roads AND heavy traffic is hard to beat.
There are some good things about the vehicles here. There are thousands of motorbikes on the roads and thousands of auto- rickshaws and thousands of small very light weight vehicles for carrying all sorts of things around the city. I say these are good because they are probably much more fuel efficient overall than what we would have back home. We have seen as many as 5 people on one motorbike and as many as 6 people in one auto- rickshaw. The former with a seat that normally holds 2 and the latter with seating for 3. But there are options- a wider variety than at home. So, you will see all of these vehicle of various sizes on the roads all day hauling all manner of things from food to TV's to plywood to bricks to huge granite stones. There seems to be a vehicle suited to every task... or ill- suited as is often observed. We often see trucks broken down which were clearly overloaded. You also see many cases, where the stone slabs used to make a sidewalk over the drainage ditches, are broken by an overloaded truck trying to drive over them. Still, I think the size range of the vehicles is more fuel efficient than at home. However, there are safety issues with the small vehicle. We have seen several accidents involving the small vehicles- fortunately, none appeared to be serious, but probably, that is the case only because they normally can't move very fast in the Bangalore traffic! In the US, there would all manner or lawsuits resulting from the accidents involving these vehicles. Here, however, the Indians have come up with a very efficient way to deal with those kinds of lawsuits- inefficiency! We are told that you can sue people if you want, but it may take 15 years for your case to be heard! So, this inefficiency keeps people from suing each other. In addition, it is quite possible that the person you sue will have little money, so it would be of little use. People tend to take more personal responsibility for their actions. They really do try hard NOT to have a serious accident. When they have "fender benders" there appears to be some shouting but violence is usually pretty minimal. Our car has a number of minor scrapes on it- mostly from kids leaning against the car while begging or, more often, from the mirrors of motorbikes passing too close. There is one very small dent in the plastic bumper- apparently this occurred just yesterday when an auto rickshaw bumped the rear of the car. Such is life in the fast lane!