Motorists across the globe spend six months of their lives in traffic jams - most are phantom jams - a study in the UK has revealed. Mumbai motorists, however, end up spending much more than that.

DNA visits some of the major traffic bottlenecks in the city to find out reasons for the never-ending snarls. The obvious culprits are narrow roads, heavy traffic volume, ongoing road works, and above all unruly driving and pedestrian indiscipline.

Haji Ali junction, 5.00pm

This junction witnesses a daily traffic flow of close of 1.5 lakh vehicles. Traffic moving to and from Pedder Road hits a roadblock here and even though most arms of the junction - it has four arms - are sufficiently wide, the sheer volume of traffic is too much to handle. Vehicles that get off the Bandra-Worli Sea Link at the Worli end have also added to the traffic woes at the junction. To facilitate smooth traffic flow, the traffic cops have now been forced to impose certain restrictions for vehicular movement on some portions of the junction.

"Most drivers don’t have any driving culture. Lane discipline is never observed; if one driver cuts a lane, others follow blindly. Also, there is an urgent need to upgrade road infrastructure.”
- Anish Gandhi, motorist