Bangalore Diary - 12th November 2004.

For the past couple of months, residents in Bangalore which is without doubt the IT capital of India, have been protesting against the poor infrastructure in the city. The road condition is pathetic, the government's promise of uninterrupted power is nowhere near reality, the traffic situation is worsening day after day. Which brings me to think, for the infrastructure situation, the people cannot do anything, but can we do anything to improve the traffic situation. I thought over it long and hard, and I think yes, we can do something to improve the traffic situation in the city.

Nothing can be simpler than this at the same time more difficult. At its simplest, its just a matter of changing our perspective from "I want to go first!!!" to "Please, you go first", whenever we come to a junction or an intersection. I have spent a considerable time in the US and this was one major difference I saw between the drivers in the US and the drivers in India. In US the drivers ask the other person to go first, whereas the drivers in India stop everyone else and want to go first no matter what happens. To change this mentality will take a herculean effort from all drivers and without doubt, the government cannot help in this matter.

Here I propose to all the citizens of Bangalore to join me in a group (I want to call it as: "Bangalore for Better Driving Experience", although suggestions are welcome) that will call for better experience on roads. Here are some questions I want to ask all that I hope would help in identifying what we need to do in improving the traffic condition:

1. Have you ever overtaken a vehicle from left hand side?
2. At a junction, have you ever barged in blocking traffic that was moving?
3. While joining a main street from a side street, have you stopped to look if there is anyone coming and stopped for that vehicle to pass before joining the main street?
4. Do you honk if you want to pass a vehicle moving ahead of you?
5. When in a traffic jam, do you normally jump lanes in order to get in the front of the jam, no matter if you have to go to the extreme right of the road?
6. Do you stop for the pedestrians to cross a street?
7. If you are moving on a street and you see a vehicle wants to cross the street to go in a side street, do you stop and let that vehicle pass?

This list is not comprehensive and I don't gaurantee that this will improve the overall driving experience, but this would definitely help our own driving experience as I have found out. Even if some people start following it, it would improve the driving experience immensely and once people start seeing the benefits, I am sure, more will subscribe to this thought of, "Please, you go first".