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Comment by sonink | Hacker News Reader

Driving in India is only insane to westerners. I have been driving in India for a decade and I dont find it hard at all. Driving in the US though is one of the most stressfull things for me.

Part of the stress in US is because of the different side driving, but also a lot because I have to keep in mind a TON of rules - lane markers, speed limits, lane changing etc.- and everyone moves in super high speed so any mistake can be fatal.

In India, on the other hand I just need to take care of the signals and otherwise wherever my car can fit, I am good to go. If my car rubs a bit against another car or a small bump here and there - no big deal. Driving in the night though is stressful in India also and I avoid it.

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> Driving in India is only insane to westerners.

According to Wikipedia[1], there are 56% more traffic fatalities annually than in the US. Compared to the UK, it's 472% more. I don't think it's merely a matter of perspective. The data indicates it's much more dangerous in absolute terms.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...

Those figures dont necessarily mean that driving in India is stressfull.

To give you one data point - almost ALL cars in the US/UK will have Air Bags. My guess is that MOST cars in India do NOT have an air bag. Additionally, this figure also included two wheelers, which will obviously have a higher fatality rate.

India might be having a lot less accidents than the US (and possibly because of low speeds), but just because most vehicles do not have air bag, the fatality rate could be much higher.

In any case, I am not really arguing that India traffic should not improve. Just that the perceived 'stress' level might be just because of a relative comparison against a different 'system' of traffic.

I drove in India for 6 years and have been driving in the US for 8 years now. I used to feel exactly the same way initially. I used to wonder how I would follow so many rules. But once I got used to them (in a few months) driving became SO easy. The traffic situation in India is objectively insane, without a doubt.

> because I have to keep in mind a TON of rules - lane markers, speed limits, lane changing etc.- and everyone moves in super high speed so any mistake can be fatal.

You're really not going to like driving in Germany, then.

Seriously though - the Germans are amazingly good drivers (easily the best in the world), and it's mostly because their training is so thorough. This results in their having a common driving culture, so that going 300 km/hr on their remaining unrestricted/uncongested Autobahn is quite safe.

But would they be able to handle Indian traffic?

I just spent a month in India, and the driving is COMPLETELY INSANE. Saying it's only insane to Westerners, is the same as saying it's only not insane to South East Asians. If you're not tied up in absolutely hellish gridlock for an hour and a half to go ten miles. You're flying down "highways", playing constant chicken with every single oncoming vehicle. There is no argument that complete anarchy on the road ways is less stressful than actual civilized structure. It's not even worth going out at night further than you can walk, because by the time you got there, the night would be over. Red light? Bah, I'll go through it. Car there? I'll run into it. People walking? Ahhh they'll move. Wasting hours of your life to drive across town everyday? Pfft, who needs a life. Want a car with a seat belt? GOOD LUCK.

Nothing about any of that says stress free. Even if the traffic was perfect, the streets lined with absolute filth is enough to stress anyone out.

Everything that you mentioned isn't hard for me at all. The hellish gridlock - I rarely venture out on the main arteries during peak time. The playing chicken - I do it almost instinctively and dont even think about it.

The anarchy that you talk about is simply a result of diverse driving platforms sharing the same space. Indian roads need to have a wide variety of vehicles (2/3/4 wheelers) because 95% of the country simply cannot afford the cheapest car that sells in the US. We can't have wide roads with speed limits because its just too expensive and India is a dramatically poor country.

This model works for now and hopefully India will skip the insanely high energy American model on the way to the next.

Just because you're used to it, doesn't mean it's not completely insane and stressful for the rest of the world. You take two people who have never driven car before in their life, and throw one in a western driving scenario, and another in India. You tell me which one would be more stressed out.

The whole article is full of interviews with Indians who are all complaining about how extremely dangerous it is to drive in India.

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