nomad4ever

India is notorious for its crazy and congested traffic, as well as for constant electricity brownouts. Both issues together would make for a catastrophic combination during rush hour.

Just imagine traffic lights at intersections out of electricity, leaving commuters suddenly all to themselves to regulate who has the right of way.

Right of way also is a debatable subject not only in India – but in all Asia – mainly the bigger and/or faster vehicle has the right of way. If in doubt, those with the loudest horn or brightest high beam of lights goes first.

While in bigger cities that isn’t necessarily a problem – as traffic cops sometimes try to help (dis-)organizing the traffic as it slowly flows or not; in the provinces there aren’t usually that many traffic police deployed to regulate traffic matters.

Lack of money and lack of electricity mainly make traffic lights rather obsolete, if there are any at all.

I’m yet to find a single traffic light in the whole state of Goa, even though I’m driving around basically every day.

Here, traffic is regulated by rumblers. Those are basically speedbrakers which are at almost every intersection and should prevent you from driving onto the intersection with full speed. To ensure that, they come in all shapes and sizes, just one small hill, or 2-3 or sometimes even 4 waves of elevated bumps.

And who need traffic lights anyway?

So when you pass an intersection, you mainly have to roll over at least 2 speedbrakers, slowing you down significantly and making for a nice bottle neck.

That doesn’t prevent local or foreign youngsters or Hippies, either high on testosterone, adrenaline, drugs or all of them to fly over these speedbrakers at breakneck speeds.

Trucks and buses are another plague, driving almost always in the mid of the road, breaking for nothing and no one. Therefore, most accidents in Goa involve either trucks or motor bikes, with fatalities occurring every day.

Driving at night is a complete different topic; as street lights are rare, pot holes and obstacles (including holy cows, water buffaloes, dogs or goat) are many and you will be constantly blinded by the high beams of oncoming traffic.

Drunk driving or street racing is very common here as well, so be prepared to be more challenged than elsewhere.

General tips are to drive rather slow, stay as much to the left side of the road as possible and avoid driving at night as much as possible.

Don’t assume that other drivers are as afraid to die as you – for Hindus believe in reincarnation and won’t have troubles to make it right the next time around – after rebirth.

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written by Chris