A hard look at our Common “Driving” Sense

Ok Folks.. You need to excuse me for being a little blunt here…. but I just cannot get a hang of what’s happened to our sense of driving. It all of us and I assure you that we don’t intentionally mess up.

Just check out these “useless” driving tips that we see on advertisement boards masquerading as traffic sign boards!

“Speed Thrills But Kills” - Silly unless qualified
“Follow Lane Discipline” - The ultimate! What is this? How many people know what “lane discipline” is? Seriously!
“Drive slowly reach safely” - yeah sure… why not. Drive at 20 Kmph and feel proud that you prevented another guy from getting elsewhere a little earlier
“Do not use dazzling lights” - What’s the light intensity that can be classified as “dazzling”?
“Obey Traffic Rules” - Yes Sir! I respect your company’s wishes to obey traffic rules!

These are just some of the signs that one sees on the roads these days - the pathetic “I am also socially conscious” excuse for putting up their advertisements on the roads by companies.

The "advise" that follows are not road rules according to the highly contemporary Motor Vehicles Act 1988 (Yeah contemporary because our Police Act is something from the 19th century and the MVA is a lot contemporary), but just instances where we have failed to make use of our common sense for whatever reasons. The idea isn’t to be critical, but just an earnest request to take a hard look at how we drive and what we can do to enhance the on-road experience in India. That way we could try and reduce the 6% of road accidents that India contributes to the global statistics despite having only 1% of vehicle population of the world. We could also contribute to reducing the 70 accidents/10,000 vehicles that we are getting well known for.

Traffic Flows.(Period) This is the underlying principle for any road sense. As long as you look at traffic as a flow, it’s obvious what needs to be done.

Lanes and Lane discipline

1. Keep left, unless you are overtaking. It does not matter how wide/narrow the road is. Keep to your left. Allow someone who wants to drive faster than you to get ahead of you. Believe me, nothing will happen to you if you do so.
2. Overtaking? Well, do not use the opposite traffic lane for overtaking and if at all you have to use it, please keep in mind that the vehicle in the opposite direction has a right of way
3. Turning right? Exit your current road from your left lane and enter the road to your right on its left lane. Just do that. Nothing more. Nothing less.
4. Turning right? Don’t turn in parallel with another car that’s taking a right turn unless the intersection is 4-laned(sic)!

Lights

1. Focus. Focus. Focus! Dazzling lights DO NOT cause problems for the vehicles on the opposite side. It is lights that are out of focus that cause problems. It does not matter how bright/dim your lights are. If they are not focused, it will “dazzle”. Get your lights focused such that they are aimed at the road ahead and not at the sky. There are several places where you can get that done or if you are interested, do it yourself. In Indian conditions, the brighter the lights, the better, but PLEASE focus it. Oh!! Yes, there is something called focusing lights
2. Turn off Fog Lights: Trying to get the best out of the money that you paid for your car? Turn them off. Fog lights have no reason to be turned on unless there is a fog. It is extremely irritating to oncoming vehicles and serves you no purpose - city or highway
3. The one eyed jack!! If at all you loose one of your lights, even when you are in the highway, switch to low beam. Having a single unfocussed hi-beam blinds the oncoming vehicle and they cannot make out whether you are a car or a 2 wheeler.
4. Highway driving: Please dip your lights when you see an oncoming vehicle. You gain nothing by blinding them.

Speed

1. Speed does not kill. Lack of driving discipline kills. If a vehicle behind you wishes to get ahead of you, LET THEM. (forgive the repetition, but if you are not in a hurry, it does not mean someone else shouldn’t be)
2. There are 2 ways to improve the flow of traffic. Widen the roads (more vehicles can go at the same time) or go faster (in a given time, more vehicles get from point A to B). Keep in mind that traffic is a flow. Crawling at 30 kmph bang in the middle of a broad road at 1.00pm in the afternoon is NOT good driving. By no means. And if you want to drive slowly, get to the extreme left.

Traffic Lights (Signals)

1. When the light turns green, step on it. Accelerate. The faster you get out of the intersection, more the number of vehicles that can get through in that 30 or 40 seconds when the light is green. If the speed limit if 50 Kmph, then get to 50 Kmph as soon as you can. and NO - this is not called as driving fast.
2. If are riding a 2 wheeler, do not snake your way to the front of the waiting vehicles at the signal unless you intend to move fast!
3. If the light is red, STOP. It does not matter what time of the day or night it is. If you stop, chances are the guy behind you will also respect the stop light.

General Driving

1. On the highway, do not use a right indicator to signal the guy behind you to overtake. No such signals exist in any traffic book. Wave the guy, or simply give him way to go. A right indicator is a signal that you are turning right
2. Do not overtake on the left. Absolutely no reason to. Honk till the guy in front of you moves left (provided you see that he has space to his left). You have a right to demand your road.
3. And this one goes out specially to my fellow 2 wheeler friends - when we see a vehicle ahead of us turning right with the right indicator on, why do we still try to overtake on the right? What’s the intention? I don’t get it.
4. Avoid the swishing tail effect: Drive directly behind the vehicle in front of you. If each vehicle is going to offset themselves by several inches to the right when behind another one, you just manage to create a “swishing” tail that totally throws the oncoming traffic into a mess
5. NEVER NEVER ever proceed in the opposite lane of a divided highway. You are putting yourself and other road users at risk. Go a few kms to find a u-turn. And NO - turning on the lights and proceeding in the opposite direction still does not make it okay.

I guess that’s it for now. Let’s enrich our driving experience. And please do not allow violators to get the better of you. Spare a few minutes to yell at the morons doing something stupid. You owe it to the society!

Eliminating System-Induced Forced Corruption

There is a certain kind of corruption which is induced by the current systems/procedures/inefficiencies. The solution of making the system more effective is long term and cannot be easily addressed and hence will continue to encourage corruption.

A position of a “Public Procedures Officer” is required as a stop-gap arrangement for reducing system induced/ system forced corruption. This document summarizes this need.

Background

I would like to define 2 types of corruption - "Active" and "System Induced Forced Corruption".

Active corruption is the act of insisting on money for completion of a certain work - could be either to perform the duty or exceed the scope of duty.

• You want something done from someone. But you know it won’t get done till you pay a bribe. It’s a bribe for a public servant to perform his/her duty

• You want something outside the normal procedure. You pay a bribe and get it done. It’s a bribe for a public servant to exceed his authority

The other is SIFC - System Induced Forced Corruption.

The Problem

This form(SIFC) of corruption is initiated by the citizen as against the public servant in the former case. Majority of SIFC is due to a combination of the following reasons and usually involves the citizen “hiring” an agent to complete a government formality:

1. Procedure: Lack of clarity in the procedure, necessary forms and formalities to complete a certain work. Lack of clear guidelines, example forms, locations for form availability etc. A citizen attempts to get a work done at a government office. After multiple attempts at being told that his/her “application package” is incomplete, he/she is forced to hire an agent. There are limitation on the number of days a citizen can take time off their regular work to attempt to complete the “incomplete package” and the extent of this incompleteness is known only one step at a time.This agent usually has an “arrangement” with the public servant.
2. Lack of clear indications on timelines - Assuming that the application package is complete, how long does a citizen wait to get the response? There are no clear timelines on the same. Random answers at the government office causes a citizen to panic and again results in them hiring an agent.
3. Lack of accountability and escalation procedures - The most successful citizen has managed to submit the completed application after being reasonably certain how long it would take for processing and getting the appropriate response. But no response comes through. Who is responsible for this particular response? If there is a sequence of internal processing required, who coordinates it? Who front-ends it? How does a common man know who is supposedly the right person within a government organization? Who does he/she approach when work does not get completed within a certain timeframe? Again an agent is hired.

There could be several other reasons for the forced hiring of an “agent” and such a habit will continue unless a citizen’s 3 simple expectations are fulfilled:

1. Knowledge of Application procedure/package

2. Knowledge of expected timelines for completing a process

3. Knowledge of the exact officer who can be held accountable

If these 3 pieces of information are available to a citizen, then most of the agent hiring and SIFC would cease.

It does NOT MATTER whether the departments are slow or understaffed. That’s not the problem we are attempting to solve. Making government departments efficient is NOT THE most important task at hand.

Let’s accept the current state of efficiency as given. What is needed is KNOWLEDGE on how to handle the system in its current form. How does a citizen obtain this knowledge? This knowledge is critical to eliminate SIFC as we have seen.

Possible Solution - appointment of PPO (Public Procedure Officer)

The government has done a reasonably fine job with the RTI act and in appointing PIO’s and appellate authorities.

What we need is a PPO - a Public Procedures Officer for each department/office or whatever the case maybe.

For a moment let’s leave out the structure of such a PPO and focus on the roles of such a PPO.

Simple: A PPO needs to provide answers to a citizen on the 3 aspects mentioned above - procedure, timelines and accountability/escalation.

The methodology for providing this information can be easily arrived at once it has been accepted in principle that such an officer is required.

Without solving the problem of SIFC, we may only eliminate corruption marginally. Government servants are going to hide behind a maze of complicated procedures forcing agents to become the new route for bribes

Twitter: bmadhusudhan