Bangalore Traffic

In front of us we saw this; a truck loaded down with plastic

I spy with my little eye...a woman in a saree running across at least 6 lanes of traffic and ...a cow!

What's Bangalore without the never-ending road construction

The chaos of Bangalore traffic is enough to cause stress induced headaches. I don't leave the neighborhood much these days unless absolutely necessary.    It seems to have gotten worse in the last year since we've lived here.

I heard recently that Bangalore has the worst traffic in all of India.  This includes the big cities of Mumbai and Delhi and Kolkata.  The commutes are so long it would make commuters from Atlanta, Georgia cry.  This morning I was on my way into the city.  It was an hour drive to take the kids to their last day of Globetrippers kids camp.  We were almost there when we witnessed an accident. 

A guy driving an old motorcycle in an old helmet was up a couple of car lengths ahead of us. Traffic  was merging into a three point round about intersection when suddenly a large truck merges in between us and hits the motorcyclists.  He never even slowed down. Just a sudden brake light indicated what I knew was going to happen.  Like it was in slow motion I saw the bike, then saw the truck merge in too quickly.  I mentally calculated the consequences of the truck's speed to flow of traffic and... BAM!  There went the rider, flying off to the left side of the road and his bike nearly gets buried under the carriage of the truck.  It wasn't high impact or fast so that is the only reason the man got up and retrieved his bike.  He seemed a bit stunned but amazingly unharmed. 

Four passengers, but at least dad has a helmet

They have helmet laws for drivers but not for passengers.  There are plenty of speed bumps to keep the flow of traffic slow.  It could've been much worse.  But what was hard for me to swallow was that no one stopped.  The driver of the truck did pull over to check for damage. The stunned victim was in such a hurry to get up and move his bike out of traffic. No one else got out to assist him. My driver wouldn't stop. Cars barely slowed as they maneuvered around the mere inconvenience.  Everyone is in a push, shove, and hurry-up mentality.  I can't imagine if this happened in my little hometown of Huntersville.  This would've backed-up traffic for at least a couple of hours.

Three is a fairly common occupancy

Kid upfront, dad with helmet

This is just one of so many incidents that I've either seen or heard of.  Even last week the kids saw a man get taken away in an ambulance after being run over by a tuk tuk (rickshaw).  There were abrasions across his chest, revealed as he was haphazardly lifted into an ambulance.  The poor man was taking his chances running across the road.  It totally reminds me of the ancient video game of
Frogger.  Remember that one?  Just insert floating garbage instead of logs and turtles.