Driving in Bangalore / India

Driving in Bangalore is quite the challenge. The most important aspect while driving in Bangalore city is never about being careful of the way one drives, but is about being careful of the way others drive. To avert any accidents all one has to do, in India, is to 'pre-empt' what other drivers would do, and act accordingly. Once this art of pre-emption is perfected, any driver can navigate the roads in Bangalore or any where else in India without as much a hitch. In pre-empting, a driver has to keep his/her mind open to the fact that he/she will encounter vehicles coming out of nowhere, cutting across lanes, turning without any indication...and other similar acts.

Accidents on Indian roads have now reached gargantuan proportions. Take Kerala for instance. (2001 report) While population in Kerala is declining with couples settling for one-or-two child norm, the vehicle population is soaring without correspondent infrastructure. So, of course, do the number of deaths and injuries on roads.

The vehicle population in the state, with three crore people, stood at 19.10 in 2001 as against 1.90 lakh in 1980. Every year, around two lakh vehicles are added. Of this 60 per cent are two wheelers, the transport data of the Planning Board states. Buses, the indicator of public transport system, form only 1.87 per cent of the total. Little wonder the poor are pushed to greater difficulty and so the overloading, and accidents result. The road length in all, including the national highways, come only to 1.24 lakh kilometres. Of this, really "motorable" roads are just 30,000 kilometres, the remaining being an apology for roads. The number of road accidents in Kerala rose to 34,387 in 1999-2000 as compared to 33,296 in the previous year. In all, 2,590 people died. Those suffered injuries of varied intensity were 47,860, which is second only to Maharashtra.

India Road Safety Data (2003) - Annual Fatalities in Road Accidents - 20.3 / 10000 vehicles

Number of fatalities from road motor vehicle accidents resulting in at least one person killed (with 30 days of the accident’s occurrence) per 10,000 road motor vehicles registered. Included in the accidents are: collisions between road vehicles, between road vehicles and pedestrians, between road vehicles and animals or fixed obstacles and with one road vehicle alone. Included are collisions between road and rail vehicles. Multi-vehicle collisions are counted as only one accident provided that any successive collisions happen at very short intervals

(Glossary of Transport Statistics, 2003)

India Vehicle Population -

Total Number of Motor Vehicles - 58.86
Motorized Vehicle "Ownership" -14.2 % households
Road Length - Total - 3,315,231 km

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