Blueline Menace and the road sense of Delhi

If you stay in Delhi then you knew all about Bluelines and the menace they were much before the spate of accidents last week when suddenly the entire country came to know of them. Infamy has great speed. And with the Govt standing up and as usual trying to fix things ham handedly the commuting for the avg Joe has become tougher. But it is best not to trust the Govt as last time there was a similar crisis the Govt had the brain wave, they painted all the buses Blue from the existing Red and called them Blueline instead of Redline. And the tack was ' See now we have banned Redlines'. Reminded me of Yes Minister.


Nowadays every day the newspapers are full of news of how Bluelines drive rashly and how they dont obey the traffic rules etc and it seems as if just by removing these buses heaven will descend on the Delhi roads. I have some strong views on the same.
Blaming the Blueline buses and their drivers is fine if we can hold a hand on our heart and say that we all obey traffic rules.

Since the Blueline and truck drivers are damned anyway lets come down by weight category.

Large Cars and SUV weight class : Callcentre drivers over speed, young turks on the wheel zoom with blaring music to impress their non existing girlfriends. Any body who has been to West Delhi would have heard the 'dhinchak dhinchak' music from tinted glass windows roaming around the market place and parking slam bang in the middle to have 'Chickan lags' from holes in the middle of the shopping blocks called chicken corners. Do they stop at red lights? No sir, they are for lesser mortals.
Heaven forbid if you stop and allow a pedastrian to pass, they will ensure that their horn makes a hole in your ear drum.

Two Wheeler Class : They never overtake from the right side, they are all related to Valentino Rossi and nowadays the latest I see is that the guys carry their helmets, but they are generally on the shoulder instead of the head. Talk of not knowing where the imp part of their body is. Thank god they dont put it way below thinking 'that head' needs to be protected more.

Cyclists and Pedestrians: Stats say that maximum deaths are of this class. But what do you do when you see cyclists coming down busy roads on the wrong side believing that they are made of gods armour and nothing can happen to them. Pedestrians cross busy roads in traffic just believing in destiny that their time has not come yet. I was once waiting for someone in connought place and I saw this person weaving in and out of fast flowing traffic as if he was a combination of Jet Li and Chow Yun Fat. A car would come towrds him and he would sway back to allow it to go from an inch in front. A bus would come and he would take this tiny step to be within handshaking distance of the driver. Anywhere else but India this would have been in AXN most dangerous Videos but here it is part of life and growing up.

I would like to end with all those who believe Seat belts ruin their look and clothes and so dispense with them. May their tribe diminish so that if god forbid something happened

Tell me honestly how many of us fall in these above categories. Point i am trying to make is simple, till the time we all dont drive responsibly nothing is going to change. The Blueline or the call centre cab guys are uneducated etc but when will all of us, the so called 'educated' guys learn road sense.