How to cross an Indian Road

Being a Brit, that always happened to me in other European countries. Those silent Dutch bikes were always running me down

Walking in Seattle, a lady in a car got angry with me because she had stopped for me to cross the road, (and I had stopped too, since by my Indian logic the smaller guy is wary of the larger... in this case the larger car, not the larger lady )

She frowned and muttered something and waved me across.

Those Americans are crazy.

They stop their cars for pedestrians?

Now that really is crazy!

On my first trip to US, the car stopped to allow me to pass. I simply couldn't understand why someone would do something like that, so I waited, and ... the car waited, the car driver didn't show any signs of moving forward, and it dawned on my mind that maybe he wants me to cross the road....ahhhh...I was positively laughing at that. Sometimes, that kinda behaviour seems so lame...lol.

In my town I increase my speed to check whether the pedestrian has arthritis.

Makes me crazy, because then you have to find out if the guy in the next lane is going to stop or not.

Same stalemate, in Japan, but with a bus. It took us a minute to realize that the bus is waiting for us to cross. In India one never argues with the bus. He is the king of the road. Although if he crosses the line then he has to abdicate in a hurry .

There's an excelelnt video with a native doing it on the link in my sig!

Find an elderly person and shadow them across - a form of Darwininsm - they are survivors!

There is a clip on youtube of a guy crossing a horrendously busy Indian road. He's holding the camcorder and you get it all from his perspective - its one of the scariest things I have ever seen.
I just cant remember the title or have the URL, does anyone know the one I mean because it would fit this tread perfectly?

Found the clip:

"crossing the road"

One thing about being in India is that you learn to cherish the small victories - crossing the road intact, getting home through that 3-hour monsoon traffic jam, getting to the front of the line after a long wait ...

Crossing the road strikes me as another example of "it shouldn't work, you can't explain how it works, but somehow it just does" - which could be said, I suspect, about much in India (the delivery of tiffins in Mumbai perhaps being the classic example).

I found that cycle rickshaws and auto-rickshaws (tuk-tuks) were generally slower than the other traffic, so that their approach in the nearest lane would open up an opportunity to make a first move into their road.

Inch across vehicle width by vehicle width: one tiny victory at a time.

Safety in numbers - I like the previous poster's suggestion about crossing with an older person. A tourist is one thing, but to run over a couple of stout matrons who could be the driver's mum or granny, as well as the tourist, maybe not!

Walking back to my hotel in Jaipur after dinner, the "horn please" school of driving started to make sense. I actually found it reassuring to hear the horn of vehicles approaching from behind, rather than have them simply whizz past me, while walking along the edge of the road (given the haphazard nature of the Indian pavement).

This is one common technique for turning right onto a busy road when driving. Similar techniques can be adopted by pedestrians, but it is more dangerous.

Drive slowly out into the traffic, which is coming from your right. It will not stop, but will continue to drive in front of you. If it is not prevented by oncoming traffic from your left, this will continue, until a driver chooses to drive behind you, instead of in front, and others hopefuly follow. You maythen complete your right turn.

Oh! I'd so much rather drive on busy roads than walk!

This is a great topic.

I just got back from my first trip to India. And - THE thing I found hardest-most exhausting-most upsetting -- was street crossing. I even took some very short rickshaw rides and paid the person some irrational amount of rs in order to avoid this.

I did best with the find/join a pack of other people technique, just as described - get self on downstream edge of the group and follow them.

I am someone who in fact stopped driving myself many years ago because I know my instincts just aren't very good for this kind of thing.

I was much better, relatively speaking, with the crowds on the streets and even with the touts/pests, I can say no without getting sentimental etc. But this was totally adrenalizing to me in a way I don't like.

Yes!

Varanasi, in retrospect, was easier (didn't seem so at the time), I think because the roads I was on were so much narrower that traffic was necessarily much slower than the streets I found myself on in Delhi, Agra or Jaipur.

Sometimes I found it helped to seek out the eye of the driver (car/rickshaw/whatever), fix it with my best attempt at a 1000-yard stare, and just move out into the road.

At other times, I'd barely look at all, no eye-contact, and would just move out into the road ...

Other times, I just stood and gazed.

Can't actually think now what made the difference!

Cows, though, I gave the right of way to. Didn't see any merit in taking on a creature with unpredictable responses armed with two deadly weapons.

Re Tantramans' original post - I had a similar experience over 20 years ago in Greece. After living and working there a few months, I came out of work late one evening, and crossed the unusually quiet road to catch the tram on the other side. Waiting at the tram stop, it suddenly hit me that I'd acted like a Brit, and looked right, not left ... I still remember vividly the cold grue that came over me, when I realised how close I came to walking stupidly into catastrophe.

... Four deadly weapons.

A kick from those back legs can be very nasty!