[sustran] Re: Driving in Bangalore

[Alan Howes]

Certainly, one of the reasons there are not more road injuries and deaths here than there are is that, the roads being so bad, speeds are relatively low.  And with all the pot-holes, there's not much chance of drifting off to sleep!  So I can well believe that in Jordan (and here) acc rates are higher on better roads.
 
The thing that really frightens me here are two-wheelers.  Often carrying whole families (including the baby), none with crash helmets, women usually riding side-saddle.  And in the maelstrom of trucks, buses, auto-rickshaws, taxis and cars they look very vulnerable.  Today's paper carried an account of a hit-and-run which left a motor-cyclist dead - only news, I suspect, because the victim was an assistant to a Bollywood film-maker.
 
I'm afraid, though, that life is not accorded as high a value here as in "the west".  Perhaps to improve things the economic argument might be more convincing ...
 
Alan (still in Mumbai)
 
-- 
Alan Howes
Associate Transport Planner
Colin Buchanan
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Tel:       +44 131 226 4693
Mobile:  +44 7952 464335
email:  alan.howes at cbuchanan.co.uk <mailto:alan.howes at cbuchanan.co.uk> 

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________________________________

From: sustran-discuss-bounces+alan.howes=cbuchanan.co.uk at list.jca.apc.org on behalf of Zvi Leve
Sent: Thu 31/08/2006 20:39
To: Global 'South' Sustainable Transport
Subject: [sustran] Re: Driving in Bangalore



Many years ago I did some work on traffic safety and I happened to come
across a very interesting article about "inexplicable" run-off-road
accidents in Jordan. It was found that on the better quality roads,
there were actually /more/ incidents of cars just "randomly" going off
the road! The author decided that this could only be due to what he
called the "magic carpet phenomenom": most Jordanian drivers (at the
time at least) had very limited driving experience, and the car was very
much considered a miracle device. The better the road quality, the more
likely they were to feel that the car will "just drive itself" - a magic
carpet if you will!

Anyway, I think that this concept applies in many rapidly developing
areas where there are huge number of new drivers, as well as other road
users who now have to contend with all these "miracle devices" zooming
about everywhere. Surely education and standards are necessary, but
there is no replacement for experience! And a bit of humour along the
way certainly helps.

I once asked an Iranian colleague about his perspective on the accident
rates in Teheran and his reply was: "If you physically cannot get from
point A to point B, who really cares about road safety!" Which brings us
back to the basic point of the new mobility agenda: what is the point of
mobility, and can our needs be met with less mobility? At the end of the
day, we are arguing about "quality of life", not quality of mobility.

Cheers,

Zvi


Alan Howes wrote:
> I find that Indians, unlike some others, have an excellent sense of
> humour and know not to take themselves too seriously.
>
> Though how one brings about an improvement in the awful driving
> standards here, which result in very high accident rates, is another
> matter.
>
> Regards, Alan (contact details in sig, currently in Dharavi bus depot,
> Mumbai, next to Asia's biggest slum ...)
>
>
>  
>  
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