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Anyone with local insight on how safe/unsafe the roads are and if things like side mirrors would help?

I once drove around Sicily for a few days and the main city area roads were constant traffic jams, many more car lanes than actual road lanes (faded or non-existent lane markings), and people switching lanes and turning without any notice/indicators. For all the chaos it kinda worked and people just went very slowly moving lanes, cutting across intersections, etc. Seemed like the lack of safety made everyone more cautious (although I haven’t bothered looking at road accident stats). Though I was glad to be done with it at the end of my trip!

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You are mostly right, you can pretty much not drive vehicles in india (especially large ones) without side mirrors and everyone’s super cautious because of the rashness.

Importantly, one expects rashness. You expect tho wheelers to zip around you from both sides. No one’s surprised so pretty much everyone behaves predictably. If someone starts crossing the middle of the highway you can be mostly sure that they’re going to walk at the same speed so no one actually stops, everyone adjusts their speed to miss them just so and keep going. For someone who likes thrills this is good. Someone who gets anxiety will have a very tough time.

I’m gonna miss driving in Indian roads.

I have had similar observations about chaotic driving, people are cautious. At place where I live in India at present, one can actually cross roads walking slowly ( The traffic will just go around you )

I do not think there's much truth in "No side mirrors" argument though, I have seen some very old trucks and buses here in India, and cannot recall any missing mirrors.

Infact, the general convention in India for overtaking a truck is to flash highbeam light, turn on the indicator to highlight the edge of your car and overtake.

Several years ago I read an article (I don't remember where) explaining and arguing for a libertarian approach to traffic rules (in the US). The argument was if you get rid of stop signs, people will tend to stop at intersections more, not less, because they don't know what to expect. I don't really agree with it but it was an article that I started reading with astonishment for how silly it was and by the end became convinced it was very reasonable even if you disagreed.

Part of my skepticism about libertarian traffic control is that I was once in an area where there was a sort of legislative experiment with certain kinds of traffic lights. The legislature made the argument that they were unnecessary, the DoT pointed to studies that they improved traffic, and after awhile of this the DoT said "fine, we'll shut them off for awhile and see what happens." The result wasn't bad accidents, but it was absolutely horrible traffic congestion, and people begged the DoT to turn them back on. So they did and no one argued about it again.

Now that I argue about it, the libertarian argument article was focused on safety, not traffic flow, so maybe they'd say their arguments still stand. But for me getting rid of the lights was a very negative thing.

I had a group of guys in from India to help on a project. I loved driving to lunch with them. If they saw someone approaching a stop sign on a side street they would slam on the brakes, expecting the driver of some SUV to just blow the stopsign and jet in front of them. I would laugh every time. They were clearly used to India where they said that all traffic laws are optional.

Over the last few years though, as traffic has worsened, I am starting to use their approach.

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