Crosstown Traffic

The Traveller 3350WB by Force Motors

For our shopping and sightseeing trips, we had a 12-passenger van driven by Suresh.  We sat comfortably, except for the long trips when sleeping on the seats was near impossible for adult-sized people.  The van had a crucial feature - air conditioning.  Unfortunately, the A/C had two settings, "Off" and "Duluth in Winter."  Later in the trip, we tried putting duct tape over some of the vents, to moderate the temperature.  That didn't seem to work very well.  Blocking the vents may have just forced the air to come out of the open vents much faster.  I think that's the Bernoulli Principle, or maybe it's Venturi.  At any rate, it's some Italian physicist. 

Let's Moooooove.

The typical traffic in Chennai consists of lots of small cars, lots of autorickshaws, lots of motorcycles and scooters, bicycles, and the occasional bovine and caprine pedestrians.  The traffic flow is incomprehensible to the outsider, but there is a method to the madness. Every driver and rider seems completely aware of his vehicle’s dimensions and leaves the narrowest of spaces between him and the neighboring vehicle.  When a driver swerves around slower vehicles, other drivers don’t challenge him for that opening because he is a fraction of an inch ahead of them. Vehicles seek the open space in an orderly liquid motion where the first one gets in and others follow.

Only one of these is "green."

Unlike American drivers, many of whom refuse to let others merge ahead of them, drivers in Chennai let other cars merge all the time.  My theory is that the impetus is their sense of karma, i.e. they expect that the goodwill will be returned later in the commute or later in life.

This is actually a two-lane road.

Despite the horde of vehicles, few have
dents and I saw no accidents.  Drivers here have an uncanny sense of their vehicles’ dimensions.  Often, the gap between them is just a few inches.  Jay observed that the passenger's side view mirror is often folded in, probably to decrease the car's width in order to fit into the tightest spots.

I wonder if he has a full-sized spare.

Here's a luxury car, but it's from Pondicherry not Chennai.

The private cars in Chennai are mainly small four seaters.  Hyundai appears to be the most popular brand, followed (in no particular order) by-Maruti-Suzuki (a Sino-Indian endeavor), Tata, and Mahindra.  Toyotas and Hondas are less frequent.  Fords and Chevys are noticeable, but not common.  We did see a rare Mercedes, but European cars are more visible in wealthier Bengaluru.


Parking is incomprehensible.  Parking lots range from a few spaces in front of a store to a “7-11” sized lot that’s packed, cheek-to-jowl, by a parking lot attendant. For some of our shopping trips, Suresh dropped us off in front of the store and parked on a side street blocks away until we called him to pick us up.

 The soundtrack, of course, is a cacophony of horns.  But in Chennai, a horn usually means “Here I come, watch out for me.”  In America, a horn means “GET OUT OF MY WAY, YOU IDIOT!!!!  CAN”T YOU SEE THAT I AM IMPORTANT AND HAVE A MORE EXPENSIVE CAR??!!!”

Don't worry about the wife and kid.  They'll be reincarnated.

Motorcycles are quite common in India.  Unlike in the US, where a motorcycle rider often has a car as well, motorcycles are the sole source of transportation for Indian owners and act as the family car.  One commonly sees two, three, and even four people on a motorcycle.  Helmets are not mandatory and only about half the riders wear them.  Now here’s the odd part.  If you see a man and a woman on a bike, or a man, woman and child, only the man wears the helmet.  If I were the rider, I’d give the helmet to my wife, or certainly my child, but I guess the life of the breadwinner has the highest value.