Sunday, April 20, 2025

A death every three minutes: Why India's roads are among the world's deadliest

Yes. I saw this in action in 1985 and 1986 while I was in India. I went from Nepal to India near New Years Eve of 1985 heading to the the Kalachakra initiation with 500,000 people with the Dalai Lama in Bodhgaya, India then with my family. We rented a car and i drove part of the time but it finally got too scary for me and you will see why when you read below and I let our driver drive who was used to all this craziness all the time.

Starting in Nepal I could see how dangerous it was and it only got more dangerous in India then. At that time the roads were all single lane roads (what does this mean). It basically means the biggest vehicle Truck or Bus wins and drives everyone off the road coming in the other direction. At that time you were sharing the road (coming form Nepal to India at Raxaul from Kathmandu, Nepal) with herds of sheep and cattle, people on bicycles, people walking, rototiller sized tractors pulling something that looked like a large wagon that you might carry animals in it. Only they travel at around 5 to 10 miles an hour and often there are animals AND family members in this cart pulled by a rototiller sized Tractor often made by Kubota which is a Japaneses manufacturer of tractors. Then you have cars and Trucks and especially what look like Dump trucks because Semis didn't exist on India roads mostly then because it just wouldn't work because of the single lane roads where you have to go on and off the road when you face off with trucks or buses. And the most macho of these busses or trucks usually wins (the drivers). I have seen Yezdi Motorycles literally run off the road by bigger vehicles. I had seen a lady run over by a Horse Cart which wasn't pretty either. 

So, a death every 3 minutes? I'm actually surprised there aren't more deaths than that. But, imagine if there is a death every 3 minutes how many injuries there are every three minutes on roads in India. Then a good portion of the people in India still likely cannot read and have never been to school so this would cause many deaths from people not knowing how to read street signs too.

Though it's possible there is compulsory education in some parts of India I'm not sure about this. When I was there there was no compulsory education at all. Only private schools which were very expensive for the average person there then. Too expensive.

MY favorite part of traveling in India in 1985 and 1986 were the steam locomotive Trains there then. However, I think most of them have been replaced now with Diesel Electric locomotives instead.

However, when I was there scalpers bought up all the cabin tickets so you had to find a scalper to actually have a cabin so you didn't have to hang onto the outside of the train (which is what a normal Train ticket bought you then). My first experience was buying what I thought were really cheap tickets and then realizing I couldn't have my whole family hanging on the outside of a steam train while traveling because first of all what were we going to do with our luggage? So, it was literally in many ways like being on a completely different planet then than being in the United States which is more sort of like living in Disneyland than anything else in comparison to third world countries like India was in 1985 and 1986.

Begin quotes:


No comments: