Right of Way, What is that?
Anyone who drives in Hyderabad surely must have had people honking at them as soon as the signal turns Green immaterial of the fact that there are about 10 vehicles between you and the signals. Well it seems the city so famous for its laid back attitude refuses to be laid back when it comes to driving. Patience is a virtue, goes the adage. This is one virtue that is completely missing in the drivers of this magnificent city of mine. The thing that citizens here refuse to accept is that if most of us follow the rules, the traffic will move much faster."Right of Way" is another concept completely alien to us (I say us because we tend to get sucked in by the other drivers into aping their driving). People are always under the impression that it is their road to use at all times, they seem have the right to use it before the other driver. Even though they might be on the wrong side of the road, it is still their proprietary. It is always a case who blinks first. The driving is very hostile in this friendly city of ours. And to top it all not all roads have enough room to manoeuvre. It is not fair to blame the roads of our city, which are pretty good.
The worst offenders are the RTC buses, autos, hire taxis and Government vehicles, not necessarily in that order. The SUVs have only increased the pressure on the road users.
Most people just seem to get an adrenalin rush out of it or do it because for some reason it is okay for them to do it, but not so for others. They seem to enjoy the fact that they got away with something that was against the rules, be it jumping a signal or driving on the wrong side of the road. The most distressing fact is that even the more educated of us seem to follow the same school of thinking. This does not reflect well on either them or our city.
Despite all this chaos on our roads, it is very fortunate and surprising that the number of road accidents is not as high as it would seem plausible. The only way out of this is to educate people and make them realize the merits of following the rules. There have already been calls to improve the roads, install signals etc. All this will come to nothing, if Hyderabadis refuse to follow the law and most importantly learn to be patient.
posted by Sreedhar @ Tuesday, September 27, 2005
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