Tuesday, 22 May 2007

Crossroads

I was recently in the US of A…
It was a weekend. A couple of friends of mine & I were hitting the downtown with menavigating and a friend driving. This road to the downtown goes up and down as the terrain is not flat. We were approaching a crossroad and as we were on the higher level, we could see a great stretch of road ahead of us. There was some traffic ahead of us, which was quite rare in that part of the town. We took solace in the fact that though there were a lot of cars ahead of us, the traffic was moving!
The sight that hit us when we actually approached the junction was astonishing (esp for Indians and if I may say so - Puneites). The traffic lights were out. But that did not disrupt the system. What we saw was the disciplined way in which people were taking turns one by one to move ahead. All the cars would halt at the stop lines, then in an orderly fashion (I think it was clockwise), the cars would take their respective route and the next set of cars would follow suite.
I’ve seen many a situation like this back home and the only outcome is deadlocks! Everybody wants to go ahead at the same time and the situation turns sour at times.
I wish I can someday proudly say positive stuff about the traffic sense in my home town!

2 comments:

Risha said...

Ohhh yeah!! I remember when i witnessed this for the first time, I was zapped too. and what surprises me, Indians out of India follow all the rules...but just not in India, I would blame the rickshaw walas for this(esp in Pune), coz even if we want to obey rules...they just keep breaking all the rules and discipline, sad, very sad.

Anonymous said...

I remember those days when I had to take the bus to office . I had to cross a road at the Traffic signal to get to the bus stop .It would take me nearly 10 minutes to do that ,only because none of the vehicles would stop even if the Red signal was on .One day I gave a shout to one of the Bikers who gave me a look as he passed by, "Can't you look see the Red signal instead of looking at me!!! " . He must have wondered why he was getting scolded at that morning. Some of these people are so oblivious of the mistakes they make.