Orderly Pandemonium

This is going to sound strange and it probably is but the one thing I love about India is the traffic. Okay I don’t love it but I’m in awe because it’s completely insane. It makes no sense but it works. You actually get to where you’re going in relatively reasonable times. But how does it work?

I mean, to say it’s difficult to drive on the streets of Delhi would be an understatement. To say that riding as a passenger on these streets feels like a harrowing suicide mission would also be an understatement. Are you risking your life? Yes. Regretting your decision to leave all of your jewellery to your son. Double Yes.

Clearly, the traffic is ridiculous. And that’s understandable, the most recent population estimate of Delhi is 33.8 MILLION people! Moving this many people around is going to strain your infrastructure resources.

And driving here does have rules as anywhere else. Yes, there are lines on the road indicating lanes, there may even be traffic lights, but despite these core tenets of driving that are in place to keep traffic flowing and the general population safe, there are a couple of complicating factors. First of all, who said how many cars can fit across a lane? I’ve seen 2 to 2 and 1/2 try. Or in this picture it appears to be seven in 2 to 3 legal lanes of traffic.

What is happening here? Is there a pedestrian walking beside a motorcycle who is beside a bus who is beside an auto rickshaw who is beside another auto rickshaw (not pictured here) who is beside a motorcycle who is beside a car who is beside us?

And this was on the other side of our car!

And the other issue may be that the traffic is not only made up of the usual cars, SUVs trucks and motorcycles, there are also motorized rickshaws, scooters, bicycles, pedestrians, and the occasional cow also using the street.

And not all of them want to, or are even able to obey the traffic signs, symbols and rules, whatever they are. Because as I said, there are some rules, there has to be otherwise it would be chaotic pandemonium, and it isn’t. There’s an underlying harmony, like jazz, I just don’t understand it but like jazz, it just works. Despite how crazy it looks, despite that there are multiple motorized vehicles attempting to use the same lane, despite that seven lanes of traffic coming from various directions are now merging into two lanes because there were never really seven legal lanes to begin with. And despite the police deciding to stop someone in the middle of the road, not pull them over to the side of the road, but literally stop a car in the middle of the road, and despite how scary, dangerous and completely chaotic it looks and feels - somehow it works.

It’s just not clearly obvious why.

Because it shouldn’t work. There should be many more accidents and deaths and delays than there are. I mean most of the time it looks like a game of chicken. You may be driving along in your lane and all of a sudden, cars and other conveyances come barrelling towards you honking. Which doesn’t mean what it does in Canada, “You’re a moron. Park your car and take the bus!” Instead a honk here means, “ Head’s up. I’m about to pass you.” And that’s all drivers do, the faster vehicles pass the slower ones which keeps everything moving and because people aren’t really adhering to lanes, if your lane happens to be blocked by the police officer who decided to stop a vehicle in the middle of the road then you just have to honk and then inch your way into the other lane and then honk and make your way past everybody else.

Ordinary traffic in Delhi suburb

So while there are many discussions about why the traffic is so bad including blaming contributing factors such as, congestion points, feeder lanes, tollbooths, and construction, it seems like people only want to talk about the problem and why it is a problem or how it became a problem, but they don’t see that despite all these issues and the appearance of complete chaos, on some level it works. I couldn’t really tell you why. Mine is a simple theory made from quick observations. For example, did you know that Delhi prohibits commercial trucks from entering the city between certain hours and damn the torpedoes!

We can’t even make big business take a break on our roads during rush hour.

Anyway, my point is that maybe people who really know the issues need to turn their thinking around and find out why it works. Accomodating a city of 33 million people to move about that same day seems like such an extraordinary feat when you think about it, so let’s start analyzing what works, multiply it, and then bottle it up and sell it! We need money for infrastructure.