Traffic laws must be brought up to date

As a driver who drives back every evening to Bhandup, I have learnt some survival tactics.

One is to keep calm, and not let myself get hit by road rage, which is a common danger when I see the impunity with which the rules of the road are bent.

I usually play soothing music so that I am not in a ‘let’s get there as fast as I can mood’, and ensure that the music is engrossing enough to ensure I do not let the delays stress me out.

However, I often wonder how no one raises an alarm or makes a noise about the way in which our lives are taken for granted.

Road repairs are a necessary evil, but safety is even more necessary. But the powers that be who are responsible for road repairs think nothing of suddenly digging up 3/4th of a road, and placing almost no warning signs, of leaving piles of loose mud and gravel at road or divider edges, of blocking the point where a flyover ends with large stones causing sudden swerving of downward speeding traffic, and of leaving large road markers from dividers lying around after the work is completed.

Are they not accountable for the safety of the growing number of motorists and the huge man force that travels up and down on two wheelers, one of the riskiest ways to ride in this city?

That aside, I also want to talk about the obsolete traffic rules.

It is time the Traffic Rules were brought up to date.

Let me enumerate the points:

• The multi lane rule needs to be updated, so that lane changing for maximum speed is made easier.
• Motorcycles and other motorised two wheelers have right of way, being fragile, and because their riders are most affected by weather conditions, be it heat, rain or cold. Therefore all vehicles must make way for two wheelers.
• Red lights at pedestrian crossings are expendable. Pedestrians cross where they please, when they please, anyway. They don’t need these facilities.
• It is fine to crash a red light if there is no sign of traffic coming from any other direction.
• It is fine to crash a red light if you are closer to the crossing than the traffic on the roads right or left of you.
• The road-broadening endeavour should also be beneficial to trucks and visiting tourist buses, and these should be allowed to park in a single lane all through. Where else can they park anyway?
• All motorcycles should have loud car horns and should use them frequently for their personal safety, as they meander in and out of traffic. They are exempt for the no horn rules in hospital and school zones.
• Trucks and heavy vehicles should be allowed to drive in any lane, after all they too have deadlines to meet and speed is of essence.
• Policemen are not always to be feared or obeyed; it is permissible for the first line of vehicles to zip past a raised police hand. Since pedestrians jay walk and cross roads at convenient points, there is no harm in cars coming to a halt covering a zebra crossing at a red signal.
• All traffic rules are suspended after the police retire for the night.
• In the interest of saving valuable national resource, as in fuel, any vehicle should be allowed to take at turn at any available break in the divider.
• Taxi drivers, especially those not local born , have a separate set of rules that exempts them from most existing rules.
• All taxis are by law allowed to park at turnings and just outside important buildings to wait for passengers. If they create blind corners, the drivers of passenger cars need to be extra vigilant about it.
• Drivers of Government of India, State Government, police vehicles, S T and BEST buses and Municipality vehicles, especially garbage trucks, as also drivers of any vehicles that bear some affiliation to these agencies or are on special duty with them, are exempt from most traffic rules and get top priority in all matters.
• All ambulances, even those ferrying workers to their workplace for the day, are allowed to sound their siren and cut through traffic and red lights.

In case the Traffic department does not agree with these valuable suggestions, and wishes to remain with the rules that are in vogue, so be it.

The only way to prevent these suggestions becoming common law is to

ENFORCE THE EXISTING TRAFFIC RULES AS THEY ARE ON PAPER, IN REAL LIFE.

Otherwise, the traffic department, runs the risk of becoming quite redundant, I am afraid.