Topic Approved

Not just pedestrians, almost every entity on Indian roads is incredibly stupid. Its best that when you ride, think of everyone else as "stupid/its much more entertaining hindi equivalent "c*****"

A few things i try to take care.

1. Dogs: Very finicky creatures. If i see a dog trying to cross the road, i try to establish some kind of eye contact with it and make sure that my presence is known(horn etc). They back off.

2. Cows: Cows can rarely engage a reverse gear. If they do sense a danger, they will either run towards it or sway, but never backtrack. Hence, i always dodge them from the back.

3. Pigs: The dumbest of them all. They are barely aware of the surroundings. Will run straight most of the times. Hard braking or overtaking from the back is the only option.

4. Pedestrians:
One post is never enough to detail what to do. Anyway, i generally profile pedestrians based on their appearance.

The gruff oldie/rustic middleaged/style bhai:: Will stand in the middle of the road and believe its his right. He might even give you directions. If he does, follow them wholeheartedly. If he doesn't, you need to peripherally analyze the other oncoming traffic he is dealing with and try and understand whether he will make a move. He will not stray in front of intimidating objects like big cars/SUVs. He will always believe that the two wheeled kind are trained to avoid him. Sometimes, you might even have to check his motive. Is he trying to catch a bus on the otherside, if yes-- overtake him from the back. Any other situation like being the last of the pack of people crossing the road together- he will run to catch up with them.

The you can't see me trailblazers: These people simply don't believe that there is anyone else on the road. They will simply rush in a straight line from point A to point B.
What can we do to avoid them?
Firstly, never try to overtake them by accelerating into their path. Its very risky. Never assume that they will see you and stop. You are better off giving them a wide margin and overtake from the back.

The dancers: They simply don't know what to do. They didn't to their time and distance section of maths properly in school and can never figure out where to go. Never assume that he will stick to a path. Its best to take as wide a margin and pass or even brake a bit to let them cross over.

One thing we should all learn: Zebra crossings are rare in India and over bridges/subways too far and few in between. People will be forced to cross over. It would be nice if we as motorists respect the pedestrian and slow down to let him pass. Its the nice thing to do. Please don't accelerate when you see someone crossing the road. This behavior is moronic and insensitive to the most vulnerable entity on the road.

The Two wheeled kind:
You can profile bikers by the state of their mirrors. If they are not in the proper position, rest assured, he cares two hoots about cutting across your lane. He will simply take the path of least distance and shoot for it. Its upto you to avoid him.
In slightly crowded roads, keep honking a bit so that your presence is known to others. Indians don't drive by logic and vision, they depend on SONAR.
The pizza boy: Never underestimate his platina. These guys have a knack of extracting extreme performance from their 100 cc mills. Give them a wide berth and let them be merry.
The helmetless kind: These guys are moving coffins. Coffins cannot think. You can. Never indulge in a race with them. Never cut across them (they might panic brake, slide and bang against the road)

Gotta go to office. Will try to come up with some more points.
Also, a section on the carwaalahs.

P.S: This is all personal experience and not open to any amendment/debate

Do take cues from my incident detailed here:


This is how it happened exactly 2 years and 3 days back:
@Mik Actuallty , after the above incident, I realized that most of the other creatures on the road are actually quite predictable in their behavior. As you also mentioned..

1. Dogs always back off if they see you, so it is always advisable to cross over from in front.

2. Cows/Buffaloes/Bullocks are large creatures and cannot change direction that easily. So it is always advisable to cross over from behind these.

3. Pigs are dumb and always run at a constant high speed with no change in direction. Thier trajectories can be easily predicted and hence they can be easily avoided provided you spot them early enough.

The above 3 points have saved my @$$ too many times to remember. It is the humans, especially women whom I haven't been able to figure out.

That is common , people walk on roads like they are in garden .
Add some animals to it also , better get your speed lower when you see such things .
Try to honk if allowed , if not then close the clutch & rev the bike . ( That is what most bikers following here whose horns not working )

From my experiennce that i had , this was the only time i fell of a bike.
I had just crossed a junction and was dead slow about 10-15kmph, it was also a bus stop there, so the left side of the road was lined with buses, now while i was just about to cross a bus , a pedestrian just bolted between 2 buses from the left side, in an pathetic attempt to cross the road and bam, he just rammed into me, i couldnt do any thing, i fell to the right side with the bike on top of me , luckly no other vehicle was coming from the right side and i was saved.
So no matter who it might be i dont trust pedastrians.
Then the thing about mirrors, for both cars and bikes its applicable, many adjust the mirrors to just look at their faces, lidless ofcourse. Its the perfect example of dumbass ignorant f***ks that are filling the roads.

Hahahahahha

Nice post Mik & Antz !

Loled on this part.

Mik & Antz: Good posts there. I would try to just add my opinion here. Whenever a rider is faced with an uncertain road user, the best way to avoid a disaster is slow down. Profiling of such road user should be done at the earliest.

The more you think,the more points you can come up with.General road sense in India is almost nil. I've seen adequate footpaths and still pedestrians wanting to walk on roads and many a times, I've observed that horns are just not loud enough.

Whenever I see a dog,auto, or an aunty (even if it's my mom), I slow down. Nobody knows what would they do next! They consider even the NH as their own territory.

Family Unity: The most stupid breed of pedestrians I ever saw:

3 years or so ago, I was riding at 40 kmph in the night time in Ajmer city. A marriage was going on, on the right side of the road.

From the left, a group of people were crossing the road hand in hand (yes you got that right). Many parents, kids, wives, etc. almost 10-20 of them, and they were crossing the road like a chain (holding each other's hand in unity).

Now, I didn't notice that chain (because only the rightmost person was clearly visible to me) but I did slow down to move out of the rightmost person's way. Then, they got caught in some chaos on seeing my bike and some went forward, some backward, but the chain being very much intact.

And suddenly I realized that they were crossing hand in hands and I can't evade them... Slammed the brakes and stopped before I could hurt any one of them. They got shocked, but then made way for me and I moved on...


They had almost blocked the entire road, by their lavish display of family love + the sudden chaos on seeing & hearing my bike. This was the most stupid group of pedestrians I ever encountered... No other such incident fortunately.

Applicable for pedestrians only: one thing you can do put a loud silencer and when some dumb person crosses u just hold the clutch and rev hard.... that will scare the shit out of them and they will start running then u can easily over dodge'em from back...well i am just joking
Roads are filled with Idiots...i suggest to maintain proper brakes and tyres so tht u can brake hard in such condition...take care

Thanks MG for approving!

Apologies am a bit late, had gotten busy with work, boss remembered I was alive!

Want to add two things!

First about animals, particularly dogs! While obviously the best situation would be to somehow having avoided them (elaborated very nicely by Mik, thanks buddy!) there are sometimes when you just cannot avoid them.

This happened to me when I used to own the Honda Eterno! Now to be very frank the Eterno is a very heavy scooter! And while that makes it stable on the road, it likes to keep moving in a straight line rather than be frisky. I was going at a reasonable speed of 40 and there was a "group procreation" session going on the sides of the road, probably some 8-10 dogs (including the female dog as well!). Just as I was going to pass them, another dog decided to join in from the other side of the road by jumping over the divider. Unfortunately he landed bang in front of me. Even though I braked hard, my front wheel hit the dog squarely on the ribs! I just managed to not fall. The dog kept on running and I only managed to not run OVER the dog because he had jumped and had his own momentum to get out in time. In either case am sure the dog would have gotten a few broken ribs!

Even though I was later feeling pretty bad about the whole thing, especially since I am a dog person, I was glad that atleast I did not take a fall! Because no matter how I look at it, I do not feel that the life of an animal is worth more than a Human life! I know it doesn't seem very proper but given a choice between 2 ribs broken in my body and all ribs broken in a stray dog, I would let the stray dog have it! (And its not like I am against animals: I support Peta, their fashion sense is nice! )

The second thing:

Kids! They are dangerous. Very. Every time I see a kid play on the road, I just stop. That's it. No two ways about it. A colleague of my father lost his eye sight in an accident where he tried to dodge a kid and instead lost control and hit a tree trunk!

Another thing I can never understand is how do parents keep the children on the traffic side of the road? I mean they are holding the child's hand, sure, but obviously it would be better to make the child walk on the side and the parent being exposed to the traffic! Especially since kids are small and not so easy to spot!

Few months back it happened a sort of hit and run with me. Riding at cruising speed(80-90kmph) I saw an woman in night wear crossing over around 50m ahead. Honked/high beam pass a few times and she stopped at the middle of the road. Convinced that she wont come ahead and me already in the opposite lane as chances were high of her returning back, I released the brakes. All of a sudden, she's right in front of me! Braked hard, skidded along the line of travel, hit her by my left hand and left crash guard and again by my pillion's left hand, she had some shaktiman style rotations and fell down. Being an outsider to the state, I was told to escape any sort of public gathering resulting from accident involving myself. Public here are typical villagers who can make up any story they want and I would be helpless to negotiate. Without coming to halt, engaged second gear and pulled the throttle and the response I got was fuel coming to reserve, bike stalling! Somehow managed to put the knob in reserve and sped away. Few meters ahead, my pillion shouted "my phone's gone!". He had his 2 days old 15k worth phone held in his left hand and it flew under the impact! Dropped him a few meters ahead and he walked back to get the broken phone.

Stay away from the villagers- they think the roads are their cow's grazing field and their aangan (lawn). Such dumb people can do anything you can't even imagine!