Friday, December 01, 2006

[Rant] - Get Out Of My Way Or I'll Beam You!

New Kind of Road Rage Beams at Bangalore

Bangalore is a city that grew too fast for its own good. Traffic has always been a burning issue here for some time with newspapers and celebrities crying themselves hoarse at the BMC to get the infrastructure in place. Bad roads, rainwater filled potholes and bumper-to-bumper traffic has made driving around as hell as it can get. And the adverse side affect of heavy traffic jam has been road rage.

Road rage refers to all criminally violent behavior by a driver of an automobile, which thus causes accidents or incidents on roadways. May not be accidents every time but even rude gestures & verbal abuse surely has its own deterimental effects.

Signs of Road rage -
· Speeding and Aggressive acceleration
· Honking unnecessarily
· Tailgating
· Cutting others off
· Mandering in and out of traffic
· Forming a "convoy" to block access to a traffic lane
· Sounding the vehicle's horn or flashing lights excessively
· Rude gestures (such as the finger in an OFFENSIVE not DEFENSIVE manner)
· Shouting verbal abuse, including threats
· Hitting a person or vehicle with a weapon other than a vehicle e.g. a tire iron, golf club, or baseball bat
· Threatening to use or using a firearm or other deadly weapon
· Pursuing for retaliation or revenge of a perceived slight
· Triggering or exaggerating traffic waves

Why Highbeam and Fog Lights within the City?

Adding to the various actions mentioned above the latest way to vent frustration at the traffic has been to drive with highbeam on. Cab drivers, trucks, SUV's derive great pleasure in driving with lights on high beam shining into your mirror at main roads. The glare is unbearable and causes an extremely dangerous driving situation. And high beam not withstanding one has to suffer through numerous blinding flickers of light from vehicles in the opposite lane.

Yes, Bangalore definitely needs a lot of infrastructure improvement but no one can deny that there are ample streetlights and in main roads you don’t actually need to have your headlights on high beam.

Major Grouses -

- People unwantedly drive with headlights on high beams within city limits
- They flicker lights straight into vehicles on the opposite side even if there is a road divider
- Some people switch on fog lights. Possibly with an intention to display & put into use car features they have bargained & paid for.
- People use neon white lights in their car headlights and its pierceing light is not only irritating but also dangerous to oncoming vehicular traffic.

Is there a solution for this? Being behind the wheel is no place to surface your aggression.

Get out of this habit else I am gonna beam you too!!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Road Rage and Lack of infrastructure are two different things entirely. I think Road Rage would come down heavily, once there is adequate infrastructure.
Imagine driving with a 25 Watts light source and depending fully on low lit street lights to show you the readymade graveyard pits that bangalore proudly has in its so called narrow roads.
And once you fall into it, dont tell me that all would smile away happily and drive back home.
Frustrations get built from scratch. Adequate Infrastrucure not in place calls for more frustration of humans who interface the daily grind through it.