Driving in India: Taking it to the Streets with the Mahatma

Don’t just take our word for it. Driving in India is tough and they know it. DLA research staff was impressed by the number of sites and blogs dedicated to confronting national plague of mayhem, danger, and discourtesy. And although I have been firm in reminding them that mayhem, danger, and discourtesy can be found on any corner here in Boston, the DLA staff was equally adamant in maintaining that India’s story was one that had to be told. I relented and agreed to one more posting on driving in India, something of a bibliography of DLA’s web research.

 
Street Signs in India:  Yeah, this will be on the test!

Many of these sites seem to be a result of the gandhigiri wave which struck India following the 2006 musical comedy, “Lage Raho Munna Bhai,” in which an underworld bigwig sees the light after beginning a series of conversation with a picture of Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhigiri, essentially the practice of Gandhi’s tenets of truth and “truth force”, is something of a phenomenon in India. Disdained as “flower power” by some, practitioners hand out roses, apply its non-violent approach to social issue protest, launch volunteer work, and, yes, even work to bring gandhigiri to the nation’s driving problems. Thankfully, the DLA staff is made up mostly of MIT grads or near-grads so it isn’t likely that they will be swayed by the idea of handing out roses at the Andrew Square off-ramp. But you never know.

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Licensing + Bureaucracy = Long Lines + Bribery…Massachusetts got 3 out of 4

"You never want to share the road with someone who truly believes in reincarnation"

Anyone within earshot of CNN earlier this month could not have missed the announcement at the New Delhi Auto Expo of Tata Motor’s “Nano”, a one-lakh ($2,500), thirty HP, two-cylinder, one-wiper blade car. Most of the world-wide buzz centered on either the market significance of the new car’s price point or around the spectre of its environmental impact once 30 or 40 million of these things hit the streets. 

Driving in India? You'll need one of these and, well, some big ones. 

But here at DLA, researchers knew that 30 or 40 million new cars would easily equate to 300 to 400 million new drivers. Where and how would they would learn to drive could provide DLA research staff with an in situ opportunity to glean behavioral insights from another country in our effort to understand Boston’s ass-like driving.

Unfortunately, as often seems to be the case, DLA’s trademark—the thoughtful, deliberate response to driving behavior—was, while certainly thoughtful, a bit too deliberate and we were trumped by Somini Sengupta's piece in the January 11 The New York Times, “Indians Hit the Road Amid Elephants.”

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The DLA research staff, exhausted from translating and interpreting Chinese, Polish, and Japanese data, has begged to return its focus to driving research topics closer to home, namely Boston. I am happy to oblige since, as the staff always reminds me, there is no lack of baffling behavior that screams for analysis right here in our own back yard. Furthermore, it is winter and winter is generally accompanied by inclement weather, blessing the eager DLA staff with wonderful, seasonal examples of driving like ass.

But, before closing out our international entries, I want to share some additional data provided by Peter Hessler whose article in The New Yorker, spurred the DLA staff to launch the search for international and cultural factors in ass-like driving.

Thanks for the note, and for the link to your site, which I found hilarious. When I was very small my family lived in Beverly, MA, and the drivers in Boston left a deep impression on my father. He spoke of them often while I was growing up in Missouri.
In the Peace Corps I lived in Fuling, a small town on the Yangtze River. In that town virtually every cabbie had wired his horn so that it connected to a contact point located on the gearshift. A horn on the steering wheel was not responsive enough for their purposes. A friend of mine visited from New York and was overwhelmed by the way they honked. When he finally left, we took a cab down to the docks, and he counted how many times the driver honked during the 15-minute ride. It came to 566, no exaggeration. (I describe this in my first book, River Town on page 66.)
All the best –

Peter

Although virtue is rumored to be its own reward, I would encourage all readers to purchase this book, if only on the grounds that Mr. Hessler was kind enough to respond and because the DLA research staff seldom receives appreciative feedback from readers other than our mothers.

Lots of cars, lots of drivers, not much driving. Is it possible to drive like ass in a country in a country built around civility and solicitude?

Flashing the peace: happy Japanese "paper drivers" celebrate their driving school graduation, never to drive again.

This is the third in a series of studies, inspired by Peter Hessler’s November 26 article in The New Yorker (“Wheels of Fortune”), in which the DLA research staff examines driving instruction and licensing procedures in other countries as a hopeful window into Boston driving behavior. The first entry, “Learning to Drive #1: China vs. Massachusetts” concluded that drivers in China were being taught to drive like ass, unlike Boston where current research points to an innate behavioral component of ass-like driving. In the second installment, “Learning to Drive #2: Poland vs. Massachusetts”, based upon that country’s prehistoric driving and roadway conditions, we established that you can truly drive like ass only if you have no reason, and Poland has plenty of reasons to drive like ass.

Undeterred, the DLA research team pressed on to Japan.

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Driving is a laugh a minute in Poland.  So much so that they even had a reality show in which an actress scares the pants off an instructor. Bedlam ensues. Much hilarity. Of course, having your pants scared off doesn't seem to be a reason for the instructor to put on his seat belt.

The DLA Research team takes a look at driving in Poland where it is discovers that “ass-like” driving is not always the same as “driving like ass!”

A Czarny Punkt, or Black Spot, marks a particularly deadly traffic location in Poland and includes the number of fatalties (zabitych) and injuries (rannych)

Last week, inspired by Peter Hessler’s intriguing article in the November 26 The New Yorker (“Wheels of Fortune”) the DLA research staff was hopeful that examination of driving instruction and licensing procedures in other countries might provide a window into Boston driving behavior. The first entry, “Learning to Drive #1: China vs. Massachusetts” relied on Hessler’s first-hand experiences to conclude that, despite the naïve charm and frighteningly arbitrary nature of Chinese driving and driving instruction, new drivers in China were being taught to drive like ass, unlike Boston where current research points to an innate behavioral component of ass-like driving.

Nonplussed, DLA researchers pressed on. I have spent a great deal of time in Poland both driving and being driven and it is my studied impression that Poland is a nation of ass-like drivers.

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In China, they have to learn to drive like ass. In Boston, driving like ass requires almost no training at all.

Photo courtesy of www.chinadriversexam.blogspot.com 

Peter Hessler’s article in the November 26 New Yorker about his driving experiences in China was closely studied by cultural research group at drivinglikeass.com. Hessler tells us that China has only 3% of the world’s vehicles and yet accounts for 21% of the world’s traffic fatalities. Knowing this raised hopes here at DLA that, in China, we had a driving populace possibly more reprobate than that of Boston, the similarities to which might provide the basis for new comparisons and insights.

In China, he tells us, such things as turn signals, windshield wipers, and headlights are considered to be distractions to the typical motorist. That sounded like Boston. And, in China, honking is a critical driving skill and, to some extent, mirrors the Chinese language itself with different tonal qualities and meanings. Well, that’s not so different than Boston, although in Boston, honking lacks the richness of Chinese language and most honking translates as some variation of “Moveyerass!” or “Upyers!” or “Moveyerass upyers!”

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