Is following traffic rules a punishment in India (Bangalore)?

Recent elections made me to think on corruption. Politicians are publicly debating that they've done less corruption than the other party. Where are we heading? How did we get rid such people? When will we throw the freebies on their face and ask them to do better government? It's the high time to change and fight against corruption. We always point the finger to others for anything. We don't even try to make a change in ourself the way we behave or we react to corruption.

I feel the root cause of corruption is we! We don't follow rules! Even we don't know the rules in many times! As Venkatesh has mentioned in one of his reply to my post on other social networking site, 70% of the time we pay bribe only because we don't follow the rules. Only 30% we're forced to do as we're in a hurry and we don't want or we don't have time to fight for our rights! "5th Pillar" and "I Paid a Bribe" movements made very good positive change within me.

First let us eliminate the chance of getting into the corruption network by adhering to the rules in our daily life. This thought driven me to take the decision to follow traffic rules always! As this is the one aspect most of us take the rules as per our convenience.

After that resolution I've taken the car to office on Saturday (16-Apr-2011) and made conscious effort on controlling speed as per the city speed limit guidelines and follow the lane properly. Here comes the beauty! These days following the rules on road is like a punishment. Normally when I take my car to office through Hosur road on weekend, it takes 30 to 35 minutes. But when I stick to the rules it took 50 minutes. Not so bad in timing but the way my fellow guys on road reacted to me was fabulous!

I was always in left lane until unless there is a free left turn in signals. I never gone above 50 KMPH within city limit and hence blocked huge traffic behind me. Those guys were honking and trying to overtake from left and whatsoever possible ways. Of course right lane too was busy and all fast moving vehicles (we've definitely a different terminology here) going on there. They've tried to make more than two lanes and when those efforts failed they become impatient. Of course motorists were overtaking from left and right as lot of space is available on both side. These problems got reduced as I got into Hosur road. There after Bommanahalli it's 80 KMPH is the limit and that made lot of difference. But there other sort of issues were there! Have you spot any speed-limit board on Hosur road? :-( Do we have turn bays on Hosur road (either for left or right turns)? :-( Our authorities also don't know how to build roads, even such wider road within city limit doesn't have such bays. Then how can we expect such bays in narrower roads.)

The points I noticed were

• Stopping the vehicle on spotting Orange light in traffic signal is a crime
• Not over speeding when the road is empty is a crime
• Following the left lane when there is no traffic on right lane is a crime
• Going in centre of the lane is a crime (as people are not able to make one more lane)

If we are not gonna change the way we drive, it'll one day become nightmare to drive on our roads. It's high time we learn the traffic rules and start adhering to it. Rules are there to protect us and not to punish. They ought to be followed. When we start following it as I've mentioned we tend to face many issues due to uncivilized beasts. But if we make conscious effort, we will be one of civilized human who has participated in the freedom fight against corruption by just adhering to rules in all walks of life. Thus make a positive impact on our kids!

Lets hope for the best and make our roads safer!

Wanna share your experience too! You're most welcome!