Comment by raincom | Hacker News Reader

Comment by raincom | Hacker News Reader

In India, drivers don't know what safe driving is. Constant tail gating; overtaking where it is not safe to do so. Add this to the lack of enforcement. I would say 99% of Indian drivers will fail any DMV tests (both written and behind-the-wheel) conducted in states such as California.

Lack of sleep: hired drivers (cab drivers, lorry drivers, etc) don't take enough rest, thereby contributing to deadly crashes at night.

Unsafe parking on high ways: During nights, often bikes and other vehicles ram into parked trucks in the middle of no where. These parked vehicles should leave some kind of flasher cones for 400 feet or so. Another result of bad driving practices, along with no traffic enforcement.

Auto-rickshaws (3 wheelers) and motor bikes (2 wheelers): whenever I hear about accidents in India, there is a 85% chance that these deadly vehicles are involved in accidents. These auto-rickshaws (esp during day time) just swerve at last minute on Indian highways. Either ban these vehicles on highways or build a special lane for these 2-, 3-wheelers.

It’s kinda funny because I was horrified when I had to retake my driving license in California, coming from France where the driving test is actually hard, at how ridiculously easy it was.

My US driving test in NJ took place at an abandoned airport runway where they checked to see if you looked in the rear view and side mirror, stopped at the stop sign, parallel parked between cones 25 feet apart, and did a K turn.

On a completely deserted road with no other cars. The idea of failing a driving test in the US is preposterous to me.

Not sure about today, but this is similar in difficulty to an Indian driving test from 20 years ago.

It's not like that everywhere. In Seattle you do it in regular traffic.

In an Europe country where I live examiners purposely bring you to tricky locations and of course it's in full traffic. I think only around 30 percent pass on the first try.

> I would say 99% of Indian drivers will fail any DMV tests (both written and behind-the-wheel) conducted in states such as California.

In reality, no, it wouldn't be anywhere close to this figure. People are quite good at adapting to other countries, laws and systems. Given the Indian education system's higher emphasis on rote memorization, they would pass the written tests as much or more than people from many other countries. The actual driving test could be a problem only for the people who find it difficult to switch from right hand drive to left hand drive.

I agree with the rest of your points though.

Of course, one can pass the test by reading a DMV booklet. That's not the issue. Lets take a DMV test paper, and remove questions that deal with numbers (speed limits, alcohol contents, etc), and just give a subset of questions that are focussed on safety. Any experienced driver can answer these questions correctly, not because these drivers memorize by rote learning, but because they would have figured the reasons behind rules (similar to ratio legis in law).

Don't over take vehicles at turns. That's illegal, says the booklet. Why this rule is there? You can't see the oncoming traffic. Similarly, don't over take vehicles on uphill. Same reason: you can't see vehicles coming from the other direction. Every Indian driver in India violates this basic rule. One such driver went to visit a national park in Alaska, thereby killing four people in his vehicle and paralyzing a couple of guys in the oncoming vehicle.

I think they meant they would fail it without preparation. As a former Indian driver myself (still Indian :-P, but don't drive there) I'd happily wager that a vast majority of drivers who learned and have driven only in India would fail a behind-the-wheel test in the US. I've failed a couple myself, even with lots of practice (I'm gonna cite nerves, instead of a lack of knowledge, in my case but still).

>In India, drivers don't know what safe driving is.

Also, the incentive to take risks while driving is higher since the competition to feed their family by making the delivery on time or driving that overloaded truck is higher.

Yup, the DMV point especially resonates with me.

When I got my driver's licence, the only thing they verified was that I could put the car in gear and drive it in a straight line a couple of meters.

Was glad to have a thorough driver's test when I moved to the US.

You're pulling "statistics" out of your ass and being kinda racist. Don't do that.

From GP's post I surmised that they are Indian or have spent a substantial amount of time in India. Being Indian myself, I didn't sense any racist intent. You're right that they are pulling numbers out of their ass. But from my own personal experience, drivers in India drive extremely aggressively, and regularly do things that would be an instant fail in any US road test.

I realize what you're saying, but it's still rhetorically foolish at best to say things like "Asians can't drive."

I live in CA, and I've met a lot of folks from India (not a statistically significant number though, of course!) and they seem to drive here just fine.

I know what you mean about driving in India. I watch video of Indian traffic. It's fascinating. How can folks drive like that and not have ( more ) carnage on the road?

But it's still "racist" to say "Indians can't drive.", even if the person is themselves Indian. (And of course, there are many races and ethnicities in India, eh? Bharata is hardly a mono-culture. So the word "racist" isn't quite correct anyhow.)

Someone once said to me "Women can't drive. My mom even said so." I said, "All that proves is that your mom is sexist."

OP may not have intended to be racist, sure, but being racist out of ignorance (or just not having thought it through) is still ugly.

> But it's still "racist" to say "Indians can't drive."

Sorry, I think you're reading something into GP's post that just isn't there.

What I got from GP's post was because of low standards of drive testing, weak or non-existent enforcement of traffic laws, a general lack of education on how to drive safely, drivers on roads in India are generally unsafe. Having once been one of those drivers myself, I agree wholeheartedly. I don't think GP ever said or implied anything like what you think. If India were to adopt higher licensing standards and better traffic enforcement (in addition to better roads, signage, signaling equipment etc), I'm quite certain the quality of our driving, and our fatality numbers would improve over time.

> I know what you mean about driving in India. I watch video of Indian traffic. It's fascinating.

It's not "fascinating", it's horrifying. People blithely zooming around, always a hairsbreadth from tragedy, all for very little gain. It breaks my heart to see it whenever I go back home for a visit.

> I live in CA, and I've met a lot of folks from India and they seem to drive here just fine.

I was one of those folks (don't live in CA anymore). I learned how to drive better after coming to the US. The reason all the Indian people you know drive fine is because they learned (or re-learned) driving in the US and have gone through American licensing tests.

You know what? I went back and checked and the actual sentence was: "In India, drivers don't know what safe driving is."

I think you're right, I read something into GP's post that isn't there. That could just be describing the traffic situation and NOT claiming some racist trope.

Oops. Sorry raincom, jogjayr, all!

> It's not "fascinating", it's horrifying.

I agree, I apologize for trivializing it.

Indian drivers don’t fail DMV tests because they know the right course of action but consciously ignore it while driving in India (a complete lack of civic sense). This is essentially the broken window theory manifesting itself in all of India’s major cities.

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