Driving In India: An Homage

I was introduced to the fine art of driving in India last night on my way from the Bangalore airport to my hotel. In short, I can only describe the experience as the real world interpretation of how I drive in Grand Theft Auto.

Where to start... We'll begin with my driver. An older gentleman, dressed in uniform and holding a placard met me outside of the customs area at the airport. Upon introducing myself to him we made our way to the parking lot where he had me wait while he went and retrieved the vehicle from the lot. During the 5 minutes that I was waiting for him, I was introduced to the 1st pillar of Indian driving: Liberal use of the horn. In the US, use of your horn is usually reserved to 2 situations: telling others to watch out, or hurry up. In India, horn use seems to be applicable regardless of the situation. Need to tell someone to hurry up and pull out of their spot? Lay on the horn. Want to say hello to your buddy who you see driving in the opposite direction? Horn. Just realized that you left the oven on? Beep Beep. There are so many horns going off that to my untrained ear, it is somewhat hard to discern exactly who is honking at whom.

One application that I did manage to discern was to, ummm, kindly inform other drivers that they are drifting into your lane. Which brings me to the 2nd pillar of Indian driving: lane markers are purely cosmetic. All drivers, mine included, don't seem to subscribe to the theory that lane markers are put down on roads to maintain effective traffic flow and general road safety. Stuck behind a slower moving car, truck, or tuk tuk? Simply drift over a bit so that you are halfway between 2 lanes and 'thread the needle' between 2 other vehicles. Also, you should refrain from using your blinker whenever executing this maneuver.

Which leads me to the 3rd and final pillar of Indian driving: never, I repeat NEVER use your blinker. In fact, I think that using your blinker may get you a moving violation and 2 points on your license here.

All in all, I think that more than being afraid sitting in the back seat of a small Ford sedan, which BTW had a grand total of zero airbags, I was awed at the almost Jedi like awareness that my driver had for his surroundings. He traversed the 45km trek with a calmness that belied the chaos that was occurring all around us. This begs the question as to why there are not any Indian drivers in Formula One. My guess is that it certainly comes down to money, because lack of skill it is certainly not.