re: Accidents in India | Pics & Videos Reading comments about how pedestrians should use a nearby overhead bridge instead of crossing the road is very telling of how regressive and unsound our approach to urban mobility is. Look at any country where traffic fatalities are few, and you will notice one thing in common: regard for pedestrians. If any person even puts one foot on the road in New York City, all the cars stop, and this is true irrespective of whether the pedestrian had a green signal to walk or not, and also irrespective of whether the pedestrian is crossing on the marked zebra crossing or somewhere else. If you walk across a road when you are not supposed to, a driver might glare or honk, but they will NEVER try to drive past you or in front of you. This is true in every city, big or small, in Western Europe and most parts of the US, Australia, Japan etc. Pedestrians and their right of way is sacred because they are the most vulnerable body on the road. And they are de facto allowed to cross the road almost anywhere, and our city planning should create more crossing points and zebra markings. Forcing people to use a bridge means you are creating a huge issue for older people, disabled people, and in general discouraging walking.
Precisely because walking is so hard and unpleasant in our cities do people buy scooters and bikes in droves, which causes endless, unnecessary congestion and pollution. I personally have very little faith in our general public awareness or will to do anything about walkability, but I cannot stand pedestrians getting mowed down by motorists and then being told that they are at fault. A big part of the problem is that most people who pontificate about how pedestrians should behave, how they should walk another kilometre to take an over-bridge etc. have never actually tried to walk from point A to point B in any of our cities. They only drive. They do not realise that most people don't have cars. Having to go an extra kilometre on foot is not the same as having to go an extra kilometre in a car. City planners in other countries know this, and design roads and crossings in such a way that cars take the longer route, and walkers the shortest. We are so wrong-headed that we preach the opposite here.
Suppose you visit London or Paris or New York from India. You check into your hotel and you want to go sight-seeing. If the Guggenheim Museum or Eiffel Tower are 2-3km away from your hotel, you realise that you can either take the subway or metro for one stop or walk the distance. Whatever you choose to do, you may notice yourself walking on wide sidewalk next to a park or a row of shops, and seeing hundreds of other walkers, older perople and kids, people sipping on their coffees or listening to music or talking on the phone and looking inside the shop windows, you may realise that everyone is relatively relaxed, as nobody is even slightly worried about being hit by a car. This is because all motorists are forced to move at a snail's pace and be ever watchful of pedestrians, the motor-able part of the road is far less wide than the walkable part, and this makes for a very rich and pleasant experience. There is no road within the city as wide as we see in the video from Hyderabad, as such roads belong outside the cities, not within them. The primary mode of transport encouraged within cities is walking.
This has been historically true of Indian cities, if you think of the old quarters of Lucknow or Delhi or Hyderabad, the infinitely rich variety of human life and commercial activity you may encounter as you take a leisurely stroll. We may have gotten cars and motorcycles, but we have not realised how to integrate them into our lives or our cities. Can one even imagine the possibility of a leisurely stroll anywhere in any Indian city? What people are restricted to is walking within their guarded, gated complexes, in circles, trying to accomplish daily steps targets, but with nothing to look at, nowhere to go. It's beyond sad. Even Sri Lanka and Nepal are better than us at this. Almost every city I visit in India, I see road widening (road = motorable road) or flyover construction, further and further constricting the space to walk and breathe freely, encouraging only the use of cars and motorcycles, slowly choking our cities. And the irony is that this kind of thing is seen as progress and development, as if an increase in car sales or car usage is what progress means.
PS: I realise it's a rant, but I couldn't bear to look at that video of the couple trying to cross the road, with every motorist utterly uncaring, as if blind to their existence. You may not share my view and that's fine, nothing I can do about it.
Last edited by karanddd : 25th August 2022 at 00:09.
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