My 'Global' Experience !!

I always believed, we Indian motorists are pretty rash and unplanned on the road. And that's the reason for most of the accidents around us. But I never thought our roads could actually bend people from another country. Definitely there would have been instances where we saw foreign nationals driving 2 or 4 wheelers in India. We always have an assumption that the roads in their respective country would have been a lot better than here, and hence they would be driving in a more organized and linear fashion. But what I saw today showed the dirty underside of misleadingly clean stones. Shockingly there were 2 instances where I nearly had an accident today, and both of them involved foreigners driving.

#1. I was heading home from Raj Kiran's and was taking the flyover leading towards Begumpet. I was on the lane leading to the flyover, and nearly at the entrance of the flyover, a black car swooped from my right towards the left, and took the lane that leads to the underside of the bridge. I had to react in time to avoid a collision, and the person in the car was a woman from another country, most probably European. She cut across me so rashly, that I was disoriented for a brief moment. I just couldn't make the connection. A foreign lady, with pale white hair (that was all i could see), in a black car just cut across and scared the hell out of me. It was hard to imagine but it definitely happened. And I tried keeping my eyes more open after that, especially on the rear-view.

#2. I was approaching Habsiguda's cross roads. As I neared the signal, i was trying to take the left-most lane which is usually occupied by bikes. Just then another vehicle cut across me. This time from the left to the right (which is more dangerous!). It was a gearless scooter (didn't bother with the name), and had a foreign couple on it. The were most probably Korean (as for my guess). As they cut across me, I braked hard. The crazy uneven road worsened the situation and I nearly lost balance. I was once again disoriented. Just because it was another incident with foreigners driving. I was lost making the connection once again. They were literally giving us a run for our own money. I felt weird driving there like an 'I-follow-all-rules' idiot. But this time we were more or less driving together, and I found that they were driving pretty decently. Maybe that 'cutting-across' incident went unnoticed from their point of view. In fact, I found my driving more erroneous, after taking a U-turn without indicating, and found a nice glowing indicator on their vehicle. I felt stupid again, this time for not following the rules!

All this would count to be just a bizzare incident, and we surely shouldn't jump to any kind of conclusions. But what I saw today, makes my head spin. One from the west, and one from the east. Both scaring me madly.

Globalization is here, and here to stay. We shouldn't make a fuss about anything foreign.