Terrific Traffic

I think I might have figured out the reason behind the chaotic traffic situation in my city, Hyderabad.

For a long, long time, many people in the city have been driving two wheelers. In Hyderabad, and presumably India, two wheelers are driven in a pointedly different manner than in the rest of the world.

Two wheelers (including myself), regularly snake through the traffic, squeezing through the smallest nooks and corners in an attempt to escape the horrors of the traffic congestion.

The relatively smaller two wheelers do not cause an additional congestion by snaking through like this. It would be understandable, though probably not commendable, that two wheelers are driven in this particular fashion.

The problem arose later.

A lot of the people who had been driving two wheelers, due to certain reasons like financial boom through the IT industry, were suddenly able to afford a more lavish lifestyle. They were able to afford cars and other such four wheelers. Yaay! For the financial boom and better standards of living.

Unfortunately though, the people who have moved on from two wheelers to four wheelers still drive their cars like they would their bikes. It is not possible to  You cannot drive a car the way you drive a bike. There isn’t enough space on the road to snake through.

So, the driver attempts to fit his car through some remote hole that a bike could fit into. He/ she then realize that this is not possible. The gaps that would usually be exploited by the two wheelers have been plugged away by the former two wheelers.

Also, the haphazard manner in which cars pile up on the road instead of the straight lined manner one would expect eats up more space and creates even more congestion.

Of course, I’m not blaming the car owners for all the traffic problems in the city. It is just one of the many reasons. People jumping red lights, pathetic roads and many others could be just as responsible. This though, could be avoidable.