I have been driving for the past 11 years, for the most part a motorcycle with the past three years, a car… but in Bangalore, India. We follow two sets of traffic rules in Bangalore – one on paper and the second on road. The biggest difference I see between Bangalore and here is the lane discipline. The other immediately noticeable differences are the presence of few two wheelers on the road and absence of autorickshaws.

In Bangalore the concept of driving was simple ‘Nugidavanige dhari’, which means the one who pushes his way gets the road. Some amount of aggression was needed to survive and keep your ground. Those who were timid, drove slowly and hesitated got pushed to the side or run over by other vehicles. The eye was trained to watch all other vehicles, pedestrians, stray dogs, cows, buffaloes, kids, cyclists, etc and anticipate their movement into your path or out of your path. This estimate then guided me to take necessary action to have my way and avoid accidents. My dad calls driving in India as the ‘Great Escape’ .

The most important and essential weapon in the battle for space in traffic is the horn. Installing a good / loud horn and using it judiciously could get you through the worst of traffic. In the last couple of years Bangalore traffic has gotten very crappy and its not because of more vehicles on the road but because of more bad drivers with poor judgment and commonsense… the worst being the BPO/Call center taxi drivers. In the last year and half I had to drive 40-50 km pretty much on a daily basis during peak traffic hours.

After driving in Bangalore for 11 years I had built a significant amount of reactive reflexes that kept me alive on the road and my vehicle unharmed. I did have a couple of accidents, most of them being minor. The biggest accident I had happened a week before my wedding.

It was around 2300 hrs and I was driving home on my motorcycle. There was hardly any traffic and I was driving on a main road at 70 km/h. I was near the Johnson market and from the corner of my eye I could see plenty of stray dogs on the side of the road. What I did not see until it was too late was the two street dogs in the shadows on the median/divider. The dogs suddenly ran across the road. Everything that followed seemed to happen in slow motion, I rammed into one of the dogs, it was black in color and quite fat. And the next moment I was flying in the air in a somersault, yanked slightly to the left as my shoe got stuck at the foot pad of the bike. I landed on my left knee and after a five foot long travel on my hands and chest I came to a stop.

Luckily the vehicles behind me stopped and people came to my assistance. A kid from the small dhaba at the Johnson market got me a jug of water and I sat down at the side of the road. I even had some of the people who were drinking at the dhaba insist on offering me first aid but I hushed them away politely. The dog I hit ran away very fast and I don’t know what happened to it. I sat for 20 min waiting for the adrenaline spike to die down and to see if my knee swelled up. I seemed to be in one piece and drove home with just some abrasions and a twisted bike handle that cost me very little to fix.

Here I am now, in the US where all my reactive reflexes are useless or worse, a hindrance. People drive in their lanes and much faster and you don’t use the horn unless there is a problem or emergency.

I drove for the first time in the parking lot for just a couple of minutes under the expert guidance of my wife. It was an important one and it helped me to get comfortable with the dimensions of the car and reinforced the fact that the driver sat on the left side of the car and everything on the road was to the right.

My next opportunity to drive was a road test for my driver’s license at the DMV (Dept of Motor Vehicles). I failed the road test as I did not come to a complete stop at a red light before I turned right. My third driving experience was another road test at the DMV the next week. This one went fine and I got my driver’s license. Though the road tests were unassisted I felt comfortable knowing that there was someone sitting next to me.

Yesterday, I made my first (unassisted) drive with just me and my nine month old daughter strapped in her car seat, in the rear. I was driving her to the day care provider who is just 5 min away and I have to say I was scared shit less… afraid that I might make a mistake and cause an accident. I don’t know how long it will take me to feel comfortable again driving and begin to enjoy them once more… with time I am sure it will happen .