A world without traffic lights
 

This is freaking nuts..

India

That's insane. :eek:

That made me dizzy!

Wow. Niam has told me stories of driving in Pakistan, but I didn't beleive him... until I saw that video from India. :eek:

People in this country can't drive with traffic lights, can you imagine if we didn't?

When I went to India, we left the airport and got on a bus to take us to the hotel. The road leading to the airport was a freeway with two lanes in either direction separated by a crash barrier.

The bus driver should have turned left onto the freeway until the next junction where he could do a U-turn onto the opposite carraigeway. Instead, he turned right and drove for about 2 miles down the wrong side of the freeway :eek: until there was a gap in the crash barrier that he could go through. The freeway was quite busy at the time, lots of traffic coming the other way at high speed and having to avoid us.

Another time we were in a taxi stopped at a railway crossing. It was an fairly narrow road with just one lane each way. A car from behind pulled up beside us and another squeezed in beside him. The same thing happened on the other side of the crossing. The entire width of the road on both sides of the crossing was packed with cars. When the barriers went up they all raced forwards and tried to get past each other and back into line in the middle of the railway crossing. It was crazy.

I actually think it's better when the traffic rules are not so strict. In Britain, the rules are very strict: You have to wait at red traffic lights even when the roads are completely deserted. In Italy, for example, you just check that nothing is coming and drive straight through. I'm not sure if that's the law, but that's what happens in practice. It's a much better system because it trusts the driver to pay attention and use their judgement rather than unthinkingly following the instructions of the lights.

Where do you think i learned how to drive? 2001 summer vacation in India...thats also how i leanred how to drive stick. I have to say it really helped me cope with NYC traffic and everyone thinks im crazy because i dont see NYC traffic as being too bad ;)

In India....the bigger your vehicle is the more right of way you have....busses have the ultimate authority over anything.....hence the reason they drive so fast and cars literally pull up on the curb to move out of there way. They will without hesitation ram you right over.

Naval rules. In maritime law, the larger vessel has the right of way.

Actually, Italy is starting to crack down on driving infractions. It probably is as a result of the EU membership. But I still shake my head when Italians pass me on narrow curvy roads in the Italian Alps. The SVX is wider than most European cars, even wider than many trucks here. But those Italians don't care and will pull right out into the left lane even when they can't see oncoming traffic. Simply crazy!

When I was in Istanbul, I actually looked for working traffic lights. They have lots of them, but I think all the bulbs are burnt out or something. :rolleyes: I finally found ONE light that seemed to be working, but only on one side. The other direction lights stayed dark all the time!

Here in Germany I kinda like what they do. Later in the evening and all through the night, many traffic lights are set to flashing amber, meaning proceed cautiously but don't have to necessarily stop. Then early in the morning they get turned back into regular mode. Where a smaller road meets a larger road that stays busy into the night, they'll make the traffic light on the smaller road flash red so main traffic can just zip right through while those coming from the smaller road have the equivalent of a stop sign. It seems to work really well.

So a semi would have the same right of way as a carrier?

semi

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Steve

Cool. Good way to keep everyone their toes and there seems to be a lot of trust.
Over here jackholes just want to get in front of you and drive slowly. :/

Are you sure about that?

My dad was in the Navy and I remember him talking about some damage that occurred when he was on the air craft carrier, "Bon Hom Richard". They had to attempt some evasive maneuvering because a sailboat was in their way. At that time he explained to me that the smaller, non powered boat had the right of way, which I have never understood. :confused:

Back to the India clip, did you notice there weren't any cows in the video? They WOULD have had right of way . . .

Dan

Dan- sailboats are an exception, basically maritime law atempts to give the vessel with the least ability to change course right of way, if I remember corectly in aviation hot air balloons have right of way over almost everything else.

As far as the video, it actually looks more controlled than most traffic lights here, there you know someone may turn in front of you, here it is assumed that they will stop.

Green = go slowly

Yellow = speed up

Red = go for the first 20 seconds, after that it means stop

Yeah, the traffic in that video flowed alot better than most roads over ehre does...except when them two white cars clogged everrything up. Damn weekenders