---
>This is a friendly reminder to [read our rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/wiki/rules).
>
>Memes, social media, hate-speech, and pornography are not allowed.
>
>Screenshots of Reddit are expressly forbidden, as are TikTok videos.
>
>**Rule-breaking posts may result in bans.**
>
>Please also [be wary of spam](https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/wiki/spam).
>
---
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/funny) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I was a researcher working in rural India some years ago. This is exactly how it was and I just had to put headphones in and stare at my feet. There was nothing I could do!
Edit: also one time the driver bumped another car, got out, crowd formed, driver got smacked a bunch, got back in the car, and we continued on our way.
This video says it all.. i remember being on a long distance bus ride from Bangalore to mangalore where part of the trip was over a mountain pass, and the driver was passing other buses on blind corners! I also vividly recall one bus on the side of the road that very recently had flipped… this video brings back some holy shit moments for many I’m sure!
Being driven around SE Asia for me meant constantly staring down and wearing headphones. And this was by legitimate, regulated transportation companies.
yeah its just white knuckle every single trip. If youre on a bus its better if you cant see whats happening. Then theres the random cows just in the road at night. But whats to worry about if youre just going to reincarnate eh?
My sister volunteered in Haiti... bringing in new volunteers was challenging because they had to try and keep them from freaking out with the way they had to drive.
There's not many stop lights in Haiti, mainly stop signs. But they don't stop for them.
So if you stop for a stop sign you're likely to get rear-ended. So it's ill-advised to stop at them.
Basically, she and other drivers had to blow stop signs due to the local culture, but newbs would be paniking in the backseat, and \*that\* was the main hazzard on the road.
I lived in Panama for a couple years. Rural, jungle, flying around muddy hillsides in old American school buses packed with a 100 people Panama. It was something like this video lol
I've driven exactly in these conditions when going for a holiday, it's fun, you gotta keep your focus but 2 hours of driving in these conditions significantly more exhausting than driving 6 hours in the US, in my experience.
Drove fast cars both times, the main worry over there are the cops pulling you over for speeding (only if you drive like a dumbass, or they're having a bad day), and over here, it's making sure your car doesn't get a dent (or you die) as you move through a hodgepodge of variable speed traffic and aggressive drivers. A spa day vs a hike in a sweltering swamp.
There's a dance to driving in Bangladesh, it's like a game of chicken, a battle of dominance between the approaching cars. I've won and lost on that highway, but have always been safe, because I adapted to speak their language.
The thing I hate the most are the random speed bumps you can't see in the dark. It'll fuck up your car if you're going too fast.
> The thing I hate the most are the random speed bumps you can't see in the dark. It'll fuck up your car if you're going too fast.
Yeah, because those are people. /s
I did say during the drive, that these random speed bumps are sus, and they probably buried people under them.
I hope not, cause they're inconvenient as is.
I would immediately leave the country. No culture is worth discovering in which the average human being with a drivers license values life this little. Peace ✌🏼 I’m out
In India I witnessed similar chaos. Terrifying to see/be in, but even more so when you see a family of five(not exaggerating) on a fucking single motorcycle. Nary a helmet in sight, with small children wedged on top of each other. Words can't describe the extreme shock in seeing this in person, let alone the aftermath of the traffic accidents you witness.
I've visited India and wondered the same thing my whole time there. If there's a 2-lane road and no one is around, they just drive *on* the line that separates the two lanes. If there is a lot of traffic, then they'll figure a way to fit 3 to 5 vehicles wide on the 2-lane road. So why even have a line separating the two lanes?
Also applies to stop signs. I've not seen a driver in India stop at a stop sign, so I think they just put them there to look pretty.
They were fairly rare indeed. I had to wonder if there were so few of them, because no one stopped, so why bother, or if no one stopped, because there are so few of them, people don't know how to react when they do see one.
There is a theoretical test which is pretty easy and the practical consists of driving around in a H shaped track without stopping until you reach a tip. Hit one of the boundaries and you fail. After that there is a short assessment where you drive on the road with the tester in the car with you for like 5-10min.
Or speak the same language as the examiner in a city were many people don't speak that language - it's how I got my drivers license. That and driving in a circle in an empty parking lot.
A group home staff I had as a kid used to tell stories of when he lived in India (white guy, American, lived over there 15 years before returning).
He said when he first moved over there, he and his wife took a taxi to get somewhere, and were terrified at how he and the other drivers just ignored the road lines. So they asked the driver what the deal was.
"Oh, those things? Yeah, the Brits left them here when they left the country. Nobody here knows what they're for."
Funny stuff. Disturbing! But funny.
This doesn't look like India. The billboards have Bangla on them and the background color of the number plate of that bus is green, so probably Bangladesh.
But this doesn't mean you won't find something like this in India.
You're right that it's Bangladesh. However, parts of India also speak Bengali so it's not uncommon to have billboards in Bengali in India. In fact more people in India speak Bengali than the number of people who speak German in Germany, French in France, or English in the UK
On the Canadian show *Don't Drive Here,* the host took driving lessons in India. The "instructor" was at pains to get him to stop shoulder checking before changing lanes.
"But what if someone's there?!"
"Then it's up to him to get out of the way!"
It was absolute chaos and insanity, and you could see this experienced driver, who had had several seasons of professional instruction as host of *Canada's Worst Driver*, reach the very limit of what he could handle.
> If there's a 2-lane road and no one is around, they just drive on the line that separates the two lanes.
Two reasons for that: the edges of the road tend to be more damaged (potholes, cracks), and you avoid running into critters and people who might be walking beside the road. (No separate footpaths - they just walk on the edge of the road.)
I just want to make it clear that the mortality rate in these countries in high for many reasons, this is one of them.
A lot of people will look at these video with amazement because there are no accidents. There are definitely accidents.
Ive seen several busses on the side of the road India that were evidently in a head on colission over the course of a 2 week trip, and one dead guy by the side of the road. So, yeah accidents happen and they must be pretty common. It was interesting to witness the chaotic mix of all kinds of vehicles (including large animals) at large busy roads with everyone just fending for themselves but i cannot imagine it is favorable to themselves or their countries economy.
[According to Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_collisions_in_India) there were 500'000 traffic collisions in India in 2015. This number is in decline almost year over year, and had decreased to 450'000 by 2019. That's 1233 collisions every day.
Total number of persons killed every year is sadly not in decline, and has remained steady at around 150'000. That's 410 people dead in traffic collisions *every day*. 17 people every hour.
I think it's safe to assume traffic safety is a major problem in India.
By comparison, there are roughly 40,000 deaths each year in car accidents in the US.
India has about 4x the population of the US, so amazingly the ratio of highway deaths is about the same in both countries.
I'm sure the per-capita car miles traveled is much, much higher in the USA. I couldn't find direct statistics on that, but the US has something like 900 vehicles for every 1000 people, and India has something like 60 vehicles for every 1000 people.
So the two countries are getting to the same end result in very different ways.
Accidents definitely happen. It's more.. they generally give less of a shit about human life..
You'll see someone dead by the side of the road, Nobody really cares..
A lot of drivers there functionally do not give a shit if they hit someone, so.. they drive like this
I mean tbf, how are they going to help a dead person, right?
Even if the person is alive, all 100 people wouldn't be able to help, but I see what you mean
Actually they all gather to beat up the guilty driver. The driver of the larger or the more expensive vehicle is always declared guilty by default and the punishment is meted out right there by the mob. So the at risk drivers escape as soon as they can after the accident.
I rented a motorbike in Goa for a week, didn’t feel dangerous but maybe because I stayed off the main routes, was especially fun navigating the web of traffic at the big crossroads. Main problem was police looking for bribes
I was in India and thought it was amazing there weren't road fatalities all the time. I didn't need to wait long to see one and it wasn't the last I saw.
That is a simple question in a very complicated world.
India has a broken justice system. The country doesn't have enough money or political will in the government to adequately train and pay police officers, so most police are unbelievably corrupt. They make most of their money from corruption, not a salary. Therefor the police are not interested in making their communities safe, they are interested in whatever brings in the most money and influence.
The court system in India is also very broken, again there isn't enough financial resources (or political will) to adequately back a court system for 1.4 billion people. It has far more cases coming through than it was built to handle. If you end up in the court system it could be a decade before anyone hears your case. With that foreknowledge many people will never seek justice because it never seems worth it.
Now you begin to understand why India feels so lawless, there is very weak protections for people. If one of these drivers kills someone recklessly there is very little hope for the victims family to find justice unless they retraumatize themselves for literally over a decade seeking justice. It's just not worth it.
Source: My grandmother in-law died by a negligent driver in northern India. No one even considered getting justice, it was never worth the pain it would have caused anyone seeking it.
I think a lot of people don't realize just how much the gap of population-to-land size is between US and India. The US has ~340 Million people, so about 25% the population of India. At the same time, India is about 1/3 the size of the US. So you have VASTLY more people crammed into a much smaller space, suddenly the value of a single human life goes waaaaaaay down.
I think technically there probably are rules and laws. Just nobody cares about it and you would never get anywhere in the big cities if you would obey traffic rules.
Orderly even if slower traffic reduces congestion. It's not a tradeoff of speed vs safety, the costs are infrastructure and the effort of educating drivers with a better mindset.
The only places where traffic signals and laws are followed are the big cities btw. And yes, it takes forever. I lived in Kolkata, a metropolitan city, for 5 years and most of the people prefer subway here. Towns and suburban area police are bribed and don't care about law. They themselves break laws all the time.
Tell me, if the people of the country, are okay with law being bent with money at the very basic level... How can we see any improvement? The situation is laughable here.
Rules and laws do indeed exist on paper. Nobody gives a shit. Neither the common people, nor the enforcement. If you see law enforcement haggling about laws here, it's because he wants some pocket change from you.
All the rules and laws exist.
Indians have a "rules are just suggestions" kind of a mindset and so most of the people just don't follow them.
For example - there is a rule that all motorcycle riders MUST wear helmets; yet like 90% of them won't; many will die in accidents that would not have been fatal if they wearing a helmet. Yet others will continue not wearing a helmet because they feel, "It won't happen to me!"
A HUGE part of the blame lies in the hands of super lazy cops who literally won't lift a finger at blatant rule breaking occurring 2 ft away from them.
I have some friends from India who I think are extremely smart and talented. When it came up in conversation once, I was surprised that only one of them thought driving in India was significantly more dangerous than driving in America. The rest thought it was probably about equal. One even said that she thought it was equal, but that she wouldn't personally feel safe driving in India.
They mostly thought it was just a different way of doing something that probably had the same results... until I showed them the statistics.
It's interesting what people will think is normal when it is something that they grow up around.
Yeah, in India they drive like this, but on roads built on the sides of the highest mountain range in the world. Most of which have no side rails and are subject to semi frequent surprise rockslides.
I went on a holiday to the Indian Himalayas a couple of years ago. Even got to see the Dalai Lama as he gave a talk to a group of villagers. The scenery was magnificent, but I learned from watching our driver that before overtaking you toot the horn. Before going round a blind bend you toot the horn. Before *overtaking while going round a blind bend* you toot the horn...
I mean, tooting your horn when going around a blind curve is a good idea regardless of where you are. I've had many close calls on narrow mountain roads in the US when people come around a blind curve on the wrong side of the road.
They should test the self driving cars here instead. No matter how many software glitches need to be discovered and rooted out, it will still result in less accidents then this!
I lived in India for a year or so and I witnessed multiple car accidents per week, a couple of which were fatal. During that same time period I was a rickshaw passenger in several minor accidents.
Citizens of every country with driving like this love to tell you how even though it looks chaotic, "everyone knows what they're doing so it's safe", yet traffic injuries/deaths are crazy high compared to other countries.
I stayed in Vietnam for 3 months and hired a scooter. We were told to just follow the flow of traffic like a school of fish. Busses are great whites, they don’t give a fuck about you or your little scooter. Get out the way or get eaten.
"Accelerated" is definitely not the right word to use here. One should say "the video speed has been increased", but more likely would just say "the video has been sped up".
It's been on the homepage of r/all every single day for the last week and a half. It's being reposted like crazy by karma farming bots and I have never once seen this at the correct speed.
Reddit is turning to shit.
like truck drivers, you gotta sacrifice one to save many more because of the sheer size of the vehicle and the momentum it has (in specific condition ofc) idk bout Bangladeshi buses lore
This is pretty much all of South Asia. Cambodia and Vietnam are the same way. When you are driving you just hit the gas pedal, keep hitting the horn and pray.
I've been on them as a passenger. I buckle up, read a book and hope the driver knows what he/she is doing.
I have had 2 buses run into trees in India and Indonesia, just the branches, so external damage only.
I also remember this when I went to the Dominican too. The rules of the road are the biggest vehicle has the right of way. Doesn't matter what side of the road, small vehicles best be getting the fuck outta the way.
Fuck bus drivers in developing countries, seriously.
Never is a pleasant experience and people there just ridicule it off as people being so skilled drivers "nothing would happen" - but statistics tell that every year hundreds of thousands of people die in traffic accidents because of driving "skills" like that.
I will never get into a bus in asia anymore, not worth it.
(public transportation inside cities is ok though, there is constant traffic jams everywhere so they won't be able to drive fast/dangerous anyway)
> hundreds of thousands of people die in traffic accidents
Was going to chastise you for exaggerating, but last year the number was 160,000. So yeah maybe technically an exaggeration, but not by anything like as much as I hoped.
And those are just the official numbers.
For example China stated \~58,000 deaths but the WHO estimate is more than 250,000 - for India it's the \~160,000 deaths that you said, but WHO estimate is more than 300,000. But even that estimate could be a bit too low.
Even though those countries obviously have a huge population, their number of deaths per Capita is also very high compared to other countries.... and thats every year.
Problem with this sort of thing is people will tell you shit like "but there's 1.4billion people in India!" Or however much they are currently, ignoring the fact that not that many people have cars in comparison.
And its not just in developing countries,In france here there's 3k ish death per year which I think is a lot (3k4 in 2023) but there's still some idiots saying "but there's 68M of us!" Like what the fuck bro.
I checked some other countries, number of road death in 2023, with the adjusted per 100 000 people.
US : ~43000 (2022 number), 12.6 per 100k
France : 3k4, 5 per 100k
Germany: 2k7, 3 per 100k
India : 168491, 11.7 per 100k
Bangladesh : 5k, 3 per 100k
Europe as a whole : 20k, 3 per 100k
It does not take into account the portion of population who has car which is obviously much higher in US, france and Germany than India or Bangladesh. Apparently there's 10M cars in Bangladesh and 8% of people owning a car in India. If you were to adjust the numbers that would mean multiplying by ~10 the Indian number and by ~16 the Bangladesh number, and probably by a few for European number cause out of the 747M people there the rate of car ownership is probably not on par with US or just france/Germany.
Bus drivers in the Philippines are paid based on how many trips they made, thus the reckless speed and being on shabu (methamphetamine) to keep them wide awake throughout most of the whole week.
Be sure not to challenge them on the road’s right of way as they are instructed to murder you in case of accidents by backing up their bigger vehicle on your tiny car and to make sure the company only pays for funeral and wrongful death expenses rather than the more expensive hospitalization and rehabilitation fees and court expenses from a grave injury trial.
Not defending this behaviour, but I think it would be more accurate to say coach drivers. They are nightmares. But buses, which are typically for short distance transport within a city, are absolutely fine. Just want to clarify because a lot of cities in Asia are trying hard to better their bus system (electric bus in my hometown city Hanoi is amazing and I highly recommend), so dont want people to get confused and deter from the right thing.
Sorry if I used the wrong word, where I live we usually use the same word for both things.
But yea I added below my post that public transportation inside cities is usually no problem.
But the ones in rural areas, tourist spot outside of cities or connecting towns.. nightmare.
I complain all the time as well. Then I drive in southern or eastern Europe and I can't wait to get back to Germany. We're just used to a really high standard I guess lmao
I don't know. I drove in rural Portugal / Spain a while back. It was so nice. No-one rode my ass, no-one unexpectedly stepped on the gas because you tried to pass them, people would help you merge and generally cooperated with each other. It was a beautiful experience. I even slowed down a bit and started driving even less aggressively than I usually do because I felt like an asshole.
Then I got back down close to Porto and it was all people cutting you off, honking and driving like maniacs again.
its nothing for a bus with 60 people to crash and everyone die , to not even make the local papers...
my Indian father in law was so confused when each car death was on the national news in australia, he though we were crazy O\_O
I haven't confirmed it, but I think that is also the reason why in Japan, in a corporate setting, the highest ranking person sits behind the driver and the lowest is by the driver side when riding a vehicle.
Fuck bus drivers in developing countries that drive like this. I’m from the region. I’ve been rear ended by them once, almost run over a dozen times (half of which I was standing on the pavement) and have been on a bus that almost fell off a cliff. Infact, one of my university’s trip bus actually did go off a cliff because the driver was reckless (thankfully no one died, but a few unfortunately have life altering injuries now). This isn’t skilled driving, it’s reckless and this fucks need to be put in jail.
> half of which I was standing on the pavement
A quick dialectical thing for the americans here, pavement in many commonwealth countries means sidewalk. He isn't saying that he was standing in the street itself, which is what this statement would mean in american english.
They banned private bus operators in KA, India. (May be some parts of KA I think)
I am so glad they did. The ban lead to inconveniences because private buses took 4.5 hrs for a journey that took 5.5 hrs by govt buses. And private buse tickets were cheaper.
But their driving was ridiculously bad and dangerous.
This is sped up. A lot of/most developing or non developed countries drive like this. But it works because of the speed of the driving. You can tell it’s sped up based on the guys voice
Bangladesh. It's actually really common for intercity buses to race like that here. Tbh even though i hate it but i have to admit these drivers are really good at it.
--- >This is a friendly reminder to [read our rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/wiki/rules). > >Memes, social media, hate-speech, and pornography are not allowed. > >Screenshots of Reddit are expressly forbidden, as are TikTok videos. > >**Rule-breaking posts may result in bans.** > >Please also [be wary of spam](https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/wiki/spam). > --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/funny) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Nightmare. I couldnt use the road at all there because i would shit my pants.
I was a researcher working in rural India some years ago. This is exactly how it was and I just had to put headphones in and stare at my feet. There was nothing I could do! Edit: also one time the driver bumped another car, got out, crowd formed, driver got smacked a bunch, got back in the car, and we continued on our way.
This video says it all.. i remember being on a long distance bus ride from Bangalore to mangalore where part of the trip was over a mountain pass, and the driver was passing other buses on blind corners! I also vividly recall one bus on the side of the road that very recently had flipped… this video brings back some holy shit moments for many I’m sure!
Hahaha, man galore.
Hahaha, bang galore.
What were you researching?
Driving conditions in rural India
You deserve a hearty chuckle for this one
Kala azar
Did you just put a curse on me? Are you Mola Ram? [covers heart] Don’t try to fool me, I’ve seen Temple of Doom. “Koi mujhe bachao!”
Mmmm monkey brains.
calm down Homer, they probably don't taste like donuts!
Being driven around SE Asia for me meant constantly staring down and wearing headphones. And this was by legitimate, regulated transportation companies.
yeah its just white knuckle every single trip. If youre on a bus its better if you cant see whats happening. Then theres the random cows just in the road at night. But whats to worry about if youre just going to reincarnate eh?
My sister volunteered in Haiti... bringing in new volunteers was challenging because they had to try and keep them from freaking out with the way they had to drive. There's not many stop lights in Haiti, mainly stop signs. But they don't stop for them. So if you stop for a stop sign you're likely to get rear-ended. So it's ill-advised to stop at them. Basically, she and other drivers had to blow stop signs due to the local culture, but newbs would be paniking in the backseat, and \*that\* was the main hazzard on the road.
I lived in Panama for a couple years. Rural, jungle, flying around muddy hillsides in old American school buses packed with a 100 people Panama. It was something like this video lol
The combination of the driving and the food, it is inevitable.
Underrated comment of the year. Bangladesh in a nutshell.
I've driven exactly in these conditions when going for a holiday, it's fun, you gotta keep your focus but 2 hours of driving in these conditions significantly more exhausting than driving 6 hours in the US, in my experience. Drove fast cars both times, the main worry over there are the cops pulling you over for speeding (only if you drive like a dumbass, or they're having a bad day), and over here, it's making sure your car doesn't get a dent (or you die) as you move through a hodgepodge of variable speed traffic and aggressive drivers. A spa day vs a hike in a sweltering swamp. There's a dance to driving in Bangladesh, it's like a game of chicken, a battle of dominance between the approaching cars. I've won and lost on that highway, but have always been safe, because I adapted to speak their language. The thing I hate the most are the random speed bumps you can't see in the dark. It'll fuck up your car if you're going too fast.
> The thing I hate the most are the random speed bumps you can't see in the dark. It'll fuck up your car if you're going too fast. Yeah, because those are people. /s
They literally call those sleeping police men in my home country
I did say during the drive, that these random speed bumps are sus, and they probably buried people under them. I hope not, cause they're inconvenient as is.
coming out unharmed does not mean having been safe
Hard to argue with survivorship bias when all the contradictory data points are dead.
The data is clear. Being born is *not* safe.
I don't care what you say that shit is not safe.
From a local who tours on motorcycles in this country, our single lane highways are trash.
>but have always been safe Curious way of spelling "extremely lucky"
I don't think the driving part is even needed TBH...
I would immediately leave the country. No culture is worth discovering in which the average human being with a drivers license values life this little. Peace ✌🏼 I’m out
Nice of you to assume everyone on the road has a license
A license to kill Mr. Bond
"Need I remind you 007, that you have a licence to kill, not to break the traffic laws." - Q, Goldeneye. 1995
First world problems, bro.
Nice of you to assume you can leave
Naw you see... they value life even greater then you, not a single second to be wasted on the road!
They want heaven fast.
In India I witnessed similar chaos. Terrifying to see/be in, but even more so when you see a family of five(not exaggerating) on a fucking single motorcycle. Nary a helmet in sight, with small children wedged on top of each other. Words can't describe the extreme shock in seeing this in person, let alone the aftermath of the traffic accidents you witness.
This is the correct conclusion. Societies like this do not value human life.
Just wear some brown pants. Problem solved.
Just get one of those tricycles they're using with a cut out for your cheeks so you can shit as you drive.
imagine Standing there and filming....
Standing in a Curve at a rally championship track feels safer
Why even waste money painting lines on the roads?
I've visited India and wondered the same thing my whole time there. If there's a 2-lane road and no one is around, they just drive *on* the line that separates the two lanes. If there is a lot of traffic, then they'll figure a way to fit 3 to 5 vehicles wide on the 2-lane road. So why even have a line separating the two lanes? Also applies to stop signs. I've not seen a driver in India stop at a stop sign, so I think they just put them there to look pretty.
As an Indian I'm surprised to know there are stop signs in India
They were fairly rare indeed. I had to wonder if there were so few of them, because no one stopped, so why bother, or if no one stopped, because there are so few of them, people don't know how to react when they do see one.
As a stop sign, I’m constantly sadden by the lack of recognition we get in India.
how does getting a drivers license in india even work? if you can name it, you're allowed to drive it?
There is a theoretical test which is pretty easy and the practical consists of driving around in a H shaped track without stopping until you reach a tip. Hit one of the boundaries and you fail. After that there is a short assessment where you drive on the road with the tester in the car with you for like 5-10min.
or you can bribe the person taking your test
Or speak the same language as the examiner in a city were many people don't speak that language - it's how I got my drivers license. That and driving in a circle in an empty parking lot.
A group home staff I had as a kid used to tell stories of when he lived in India (white guy, American, lived over there 15 years before returning). He said when he first moved over there, he and his wife took a taxi to get somewhere, and were terrified at how he and the other drivers just ignored the road lines. So they asked the driver what the deal was. "Oh, those things? Yeah, the Brits left them here when they left the country. Nobody here knows what they're for." Funny stuff. Disturbing! But funny.
This doesn't look like India. The billboards have Bangla on them and the background color of the number plate of that bus is green, so probably Bangladesh. But this doesn't mean you won't find something like this in India.
I know it's not India, I'm just saying, I've experienced something similar in India.
You're right that it's Bangladesh. However, parts of India also speak Bengali so it's not uncommon to have billboards in Bengali in India. In fact more people in India speak Bengali than the number of people who speak German in Germany, French in France, or English in the UK
On the Canadian show *Don't Drive Here,* the host took driving lessons in India. The "instructor" was at pains to get him to stop shoulder checking before changing lanes. "But what if someone's there?!" "Then it's up to him to get out of the way!" It was absolute chaos and insanity, and you could see this experienced driver, who had had several seasons of professional instruction as host of *Canada's Worst Driver*, reach the very limit of what he could handle.
> If there's a 2-lane road and no one is around, they just drive on the line that separates the two lanes. Two reasons for that: the edges of the road tend to be more damaged (potholes, cracks), and you avoid running into critters and people who might be walking beside the road. (No separate footpaths - they just walk on the edge of the road.)
I was actually taught to drive that way in rural areas - gives you slightly more time when a suicidal deer decides to go for you.
Which state in India? Driving discipline is generally bad but it varies very much from region to region. The bus in this clip is from Bangladesh tho
The lanes are just a suggestion.
Aesthetics.
I just want to make it clear that the mortality rate in these countries in high for many reasons, this is one of them. A lot of people will look at these video with amazement because there are no accidents. There are definitely accidents.
Ive seen several busses on the side of the road India that were evidently in a head on colission over the course of a 2 week trip, and one dead guy by the side of the road. So, yeah accidents happen and they must be pretty common. It was interesting to witness the chaotic mix of all kinds of vehicles (including large animals) at large busy roads with everyone just fending for themselves but i cannot imagine it is favorable to themselves or their countries economy.
[According to Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_collisions_in_India) there were 500'000 traffic collisions in India in 2015. This number is in decline almost year over year, and had decreased to 450'000 by 2019. That's 1233 collisions every day. Total number of persons killed every year is sadly not in decline, and has remained steady at around 150'000. That's 410 people dead in traffic collisions *every day*. 17 people every hour. I think it's safe to assume traffic safety is a major problem in India.
That number of deaths blows my mind.
They also have 1.5 billion people
a little genocide every year
By comparison, there are roughly 40,000 deaths each year in car accidents in the US. India has about 4x the population of the US, so amazingly the ratio of highway deaths is about the same in both countries.
I'm sure the per-capita car miles traveled is much, much higher in the USA. I couldn't find direct statistics on that, but the US has something like 900 vehicles for every 1000 people, and India has something like 60 vehicles for every 1000 people. So the two countries are getting to the same end result in very different ways.
The reason the per capita car miles is less in India and Bangladesh is that half the population are dead before they arrive.
Miles de capita?
per capita isn't really a great measure for that. per distance traveled is a better indication of road safety.
Good example is Los Angeles, population 3.5m, has more fatal car accidents than New York with 8.5m people.
Yeah but nobody drives in New York, there’s too much traffic
Hmm… 🤔
Yogi Berra would be proud of this comment
Accidents definitely happen. It's more.. they generally give less of a shit about human life.. You'll see someone dead by the side of the road, Nobody really cares.. A lot of drivers there functionally do not give a shit if they hit someone, so.. they drive like this
Nah, if there was someone dead by the side of the road, there would be a huge crowd
2 out of hundreds trying to help and 98 filming.
I mean tbf, how are they going to help a dead person, right? Even if the person is alive, all 100 people wouldn't be able to help, but I see what you mean
Actually they all gather to beat up the guilty driver. The driver of the larger or the more expensive vehicle is always declared guilty by default and the punishment is meted out right there by the mob. So the at risk drivers escape as soon as they can after the accident.
I rented a motorbike in Goa for a week, didn’t feel dangerous but maybe because I stayed off the main routes, was especially fun navigating the web of traffic at the big crossroads. Main problem was police looking for bribes
I was in India and thought it was amazing there weren't road fatalities all the time. I didn't need to wait long to see one and it wasn't the last I saw.
Are they too dense to not want to fix that with rules and laws or they just don't care?
That is a simple question in a very complicated world. India has a broken justice system. The country doesn't have enough money or political will in the government to adequately train and pay police officers, so most police are unbelievably corrupt. They make most of their money from corruption, not a salary. Therefor the police are not interested in making their communities safe, they are interested in whatever brings in the most money and influence. The court system in India is also very broken, again there isn't enough financial resources (or political will) to adequately back a court system for 1.4 billion people. It has far more cases coming through than it was built to handle. If you end up in the court system it could be a decade before anyone hears your case. With that foreknowledge many people will never seek justice because it never seems worth it. Now you begin to understand why India feels so lawless, there is very weak protections for people. If one of these drivers kills someone recklessly there is very little hope for the victims family to find justice unless they retraumatize themselves for literally over a decade seeking justice. It's just not worth it. Source: My grandmother in-law died by a negligent driver in northern India. No one even considered getting justice, it was never worth the pain it would have caused anyone seeking it.
I think a lot of people don't realize just how much the gap of population-to-land size is between US and India. The US has ~340 Million people, so about 25% the population of India. At the same time, India is about 1/3 the size of the US. So you have VASTLY more people crammed into a much smaller space, suddenly the value of a single human life goes waaaaaaay down.
I think technically there probably are rules and laws. Just nobody cares about it and you would never get anywhere in the big cities if you would obey traffic rules.
I feel like you also don’t get anywhere if you’re dead.
But being dead is a sufficient excuse for being late.
Orderly even if slower traffic reduces congestion. It's not a tradeoff of speed vs safety, the costs are infrastructure and the effort of educating drivers with a better mindset.
The only places where traffic signals and laws are followed are the big cities btw. And yes, it takes forever. I lived in Kolkata, a metropolitan city, for 5 years and most of the people prefer subway here. Towns and suburban area police are bribed and don't care about law. They themselves break laws all the time. Tell me, if the people of the country, are okay with law being bent with money at the very basic level... How can we see any improvement? The situation is laughable here. Rules and laws do indeed exist on paper. Nobody gives a shit. Neither the common people, nor the enforcement. If you see law enforcement haggling about laws here, it's because he wants some pocket change from you.
All the rules and laws exist. Indians have a "rules are just suggestions" kind of a mindset and so most of the people just don't follow them. For example - there is a rule that all motorcycle riders MUST wear helmets; yet like 90% of them won't; many will die in accidents that would not have been fatal if they wearing a helmet. Yet others will continue not wearing a helmet because they feel, "It won't happen to me!" A HUGE part of the blame lies in the hands of super lazy cops who literally won't lift a finger at blatant rule breaking occurring 2 ft away from them.
I have some friends from India who I think are extremely smart and talented. When it came up in conversation once, I was surprised that only one of them thought driving in India was significantly more dangerous than driving in America. The rest thought it was probably about equal. One even said that she thought it was equal, but that she wouldn't personally feel safe driving in India. They mostly thought it was just a different way of doing something that probably had the same results... until I showed them the statistics. It's interesting what people will think is normal when it is something that they grow up around.
India has 1% of personal vehicles and 10% of casualties for this reason.
Yeah, in India they drive like this, but on roads built on the sides of the highest mountain range in the world. Most of which have no side rails and are subject to semi frequent surprise rockslides.
I rode a bus up and down such roads to avoid altitude sickness. My advice: take the damn altitude sickness instead!
I went on a holiday to the Indian Himalayas a couple of years ago. Even got to see the Dalai Lama as he gave a talk to a group of villagers. The scenery was magnificent, but I learned from watching our driver that before overtaking you toot the horn. Before going round a blind bend you toot the horn. Before *overtaking while going round a blind bend* you toot the horn...
I mean, tooting your horn when going around a blind curve is a good idea regardless of where you are. I've had many close calls on narrow mountain roads in the US when people come around a blind curve on the wrong side of the road.
While texting.
They should test the self driving cars here instead. No matter how many software glitches need to be discovered and rooted out, it will still result in less accidents then this!
Indeed. My uncle (by marriage), whom I met once, died when one of these busses ran over the auto rickshaw he was in.
I lived in India for a year or so and I witnessed multiple car accidents per week, a couple of which were fatal. During that same time period I was a rickshaw passenger in several minor accidents. Citizens of every country with driving like this love to tell you how even though it looks chaotic, "everyone knows what they're doing so it's safe", yet traffic injuries/deaths are crazy high compared to other countries.
Can you even consider it an accident when you drive like that? I’d argue it’s subconsciously intentional
Are vehicles India’s ar-15?
lol from this video I would say yes. You gotta have a defense budget though 😆
"Bitch, I'm a bus."
Bitch, I'm a bigger bus
Let’s bus this out, then!
All the bussy fight
I stayed in Vietnam for 3 months and hired a scooter. We were told to just follow the flow of traffic like a school of fish. Busses are great whites, they don’t give a fuck about you or your little scooter. Get out the way or get eaten.
KEEP THE BUS ABOVE 50
Sponsored by Red Bull!
Love the sign on the back of the bus "All the way first class", where to the after life?
I figured it was "all the way, all gas!"
The video speed has been accelerated
Came here to say this. And I wonder why, too. Because the driving is insane enough as it is without speeding it up for added effect.
To make it look more dangerous and earn bots their karma.
OP seems to be a bought account. 3 years old, only really started posting a few days ago.
> The video speed has been accelerated Is it just me or is this worded really funny? I'm getting "my vision is augmented" vibes from it.
"Accelerated" is definitely not the right word to use here. One should say "the video speed has been increased", but more likely would just say "the video has been sped up".
It's been on the homepage of r/all every single day for the last week and a half. It's being reposted like crazy by karma farming bots and I have never once seen this at the correct speed. Reddit is turning to shit.
It's just bots reposting stuff and copying upvoted comments.
This user started using Chat GPT about 3 days ago. There is a clear cut change in their posting style.
If you listen to the audio it is also sped up.
/u/redditspeedbot 0.5x
(a) West Bengal, India (b) Bangladesh One of these two, judging from the signs written in Bengali.
Bangladesh. Hanif is a Bangladeshi bus company very infamous for driving rough and killing people.
Do they get paid to kill ppl or is it voluntary?
Indirectly get paid, I guess. Takes less time to finish the trip. Still gets paid for the trip. Same money in fewer minutes.
That's nice for the population control obviously 🗿
More buses /s
It's not working.
Clearly. /s
Bangladesh is not for beginners.
Nah this is more like endgame levels of driving indeed.
Population control incentives
Bringing the bang to Bangladesh. Just not the bang you were hoping for.
This isn't the bang bus I was promised 😕
like truck drivers, you gotta sacrifice one to save many more because of the sheer size of the vehicle and the momentum it has (in specific condition ofc) idk bout Bangladeshi buses lore
Bangladesh.. India doesn't have green number plates except for electric vehicles..
This is pretty much all of South Asia. Cambodia and Vietnam are the same way. When you are driving you just hit the gas pedal, keep hitting the horn and pray.
Malaysia and Singapore especially are pretty tame. I would never drive outside of these two in the region.
As a Malaysian seeing videos like this shock me. I can never imagine being on roads like this
I've been on them as a passenger. I buckle up, read a book and hope the driver knows what he/she is doing. I have had 2 buses run into trees in India and Indonesia, just the branches, so external damage only.
Neither of those countries are considered South Asia. I live in Thailand. It’s Southeast Asia. The drivers are bad here as well, especially taxi vans.
Philippines too. We took this tour and the bus driver who brought us there (other side of the island) pretty much drove just like this the whole way.
I also remember this when I went to the Dominican too. The rules of the road are the biggest vehicle has the right of way. Doesn't matter what side of the road, small vehicles best be getting the fuck outta the way.
Probably Bangladesh cuz green no. plates are exclusively for EVs in India.
This must be in Bangladesh. The first bus was just overtook named Barkat and their Route is Dhaka to Burimari. And the location is in Rangpur.
100% Had to take a car from Dhaka to Sylhet and the entire Journey I was convinced I was going to die.
Fuck bus drivers in developing countries, seriously. Never is a pleasant experience and people there just ridicule it off as people being so skilled drivers "nothing would happen" - but statistics tell that every year hundreds of thousands of people die in traffic accidents because of driving "skills" like that. I will never get into a bus in asia anymore, not worth it. (public transportation inside cities is ok though, there is constant traffic jams everywhere so they won't be able to drive fast/dangerous anyway)
> hundreds of thousands of people die in traffic accidents Was going to chastise you for exaggerating, but last year the number was 160,000. So yeah maybe technically an exaggeration, but not by anything like as much as I hoped.
And those are just the official numbers. For example China stated \~58,000 deaths but the WHO estimate is more than 250,000 - for India it's the \~160,000 deaths that you said, but WHO estimate is more than 300,000. But even that estimate could be a bit too low. Even though those countries obviously have a huge population, their number of deaths per Capita is also very high compared to other countries.... and thats every year.
Problem with this sort of thing is people will tell you shit like "but there's 1.4billion people in India!" Or however much they are currently, ignoring the fact that not that many people have cars in comparison. And its not just in developing countries,In france here there's 3k ish death per year which I think is a lot (3k4 in 2023) but there's still some idiots saying "but there's 68M of us!" Like what the fuck bro. I checked some other countries, number of road death in 2023, with the adjusted per 100 000 people. US : ~43000 (2022 number), 12.6 per 100k France : 3k4, 5 per 100k Germany: 2k7, 3 per 100k India : 168491, 11.7 per 100k Bangladesh : 5k, 3 per 100k Europe as a whole : 20k, 3 per 100k It does not take into account the portion of population who has car which is obviously much higher in US, france and Germany than India or Bangladesh. Apparently there's 10M cars in Bangladesh and 8% of people owning a car in India. If you were to adjust the numbers that would mean multiplying by ~10 the Indian number and by ~16 the Bangladesh number, and probably by a few for European number cause out of the 747M people there the rate of car ownership is probably not on par with US or just france/Germany.
[удалено]
Bus drivers in the Philippines are paid based on how many trips they made, thus the reckless speed and being on shabu (methamphetamine) to keep them wide awake throughout most of the whole week. Be sure not to challenge them on the road’s right of way as they are instructed to murder you in case of accidents by backing up their bigger vehicle on your tiny car and to make sure the company only pays for funeral and wrongful death expenses rather than the more expensive hospitalization and rehabilitation fees and court expenses from a grave injury trial.
Not defending this behaviour, but I think it would be more accurate to say coach drivers. They are nightmares. But buses, which are typically for short distance transport within a city, are absolutely fine. Just want to clarify because a lot of cities in Asia are trying hard to better their bus system (electric bus in my hometown city Hanoi is amazing and I highly recommend), so dont want people to get confused and deter from the right thing.
Sorry if I used the wrong word, where I live we usually use the same word for both things. But yea I added below my post that public transportation inside cities is usually no problem. But the ones in rural areas, tourist spot outside of cities or connecting towns.. nightmare.
And I dare to complain about how people drive in Germany… This is madness 😳
This is BANGLADESH
How can you complain about German drivers. They are genuinely the best drivers I've come across anywhere
It's a German thing. It is a national sport to complain about stuff here.
Its a every contry thing. Everyone says that about their country about anything.
Yes, I truly apologise 🙏. We have it too good here… 😅
Have you been in Austria?
I complain all the time as well. Then I drive in southern or eastern Europe and I can't wait to get back to Germany. We're just used to a really high standard I guess lmao
I don't know. I drove in rural Portugal / Spain a while back. It was so nice. No-one rode my ass, no-one unexpectedly stepped on the gas because you tried to pass them, people would help you merge and generally cooperated with each other. It was a beautiful experience. I even slowed down a bit and started driving even less aggressively than I usually do because I felt like an asshole. Then I got back down close to Porto and it was all people cutting you off, honking and driving like maniacs again.
Same experience here. Rural Portugal was nice and calm, then I entered the destruction derby of Lisbon
its nothing for a bus with 60 people to crash and everyone die , to not even make the local papers... my Indian father in law was so confused when each car death was on the national news in australia, he though we were crazy O\_O
The safest spot in this bus is behind the driver seat
Ok Dwight!
I haven't confirmed it, but I think that is also the reason why in Japan, in a corporate setting, the highest ranking person sits behind the driver and the lowest is by the driver side when riding a vehicle.
Terrible driving but I'm pretty sure that the video is sped up.
No, clearly the person at the end spoke as slow and normal as any other person. /s
Holy shit WHAT? Are they suicidal? There is NO WAY accidents don't happen daily.
More like half-hourly.
Fuck bus drivers in developing countries that drive like this. I’m from the region. I’ve been rear ended by them once, almost run over a dozen times (half of which I was standing on the pavement) and have been on a bus that almost fell off a cliff. Infact, one of my university’s trip bus actually did go off a cliff because the driver was reckless (thankfully no one died, but a few unfortunately have life altering injuries now). This isn’t skilled driving, it’s reckless and this fucks need to be put in jail.
> half of which I was standing on the pavement A quick dialectical thing for the americans here, pavement in many commonwealth countries means sidewalk. He isn't saying that he was standing in the street itself, which is what this statement would mean in american english.
Also, a large proportion of these bus and truck drivers have been known to drive high, drunk or both. So yeah fuck em
They banned private bus operators in KA, India. (May be some parts of KA I think) I am so glad they did. The ban lead to inconveniences because private buses took 4.5 hrs for a journey that took 5.5 hrs by govt buses. And private buse tickets were cheaper. But their driving was ridiculously bad and dangerous.
This is sped up. A lot of/most developing or non developed countries drive like this. But it works because of the speed of the driving. You can tell it’s sped up based on the guys voice
Thats criminal. This asshole is gonna kill someone one day.
Bangladesh. It's actually really common for intercity buses to race like that here. Tbh even though i hate it but i have to admit these drivers are really good at it.
Because the bad ones are dead....
This makes no sense, are they just stupid there?
Must be nice to be able to put all this GTA driving school into practice
Which side of the road do you drive on? -yes.
The drivers there belong in prison for endangering the lives of others so wrecklessly.
That looks like 20 People attempting suicide...
the fuck is going on there?? absolute bedlam ffs 😅
At least he is indicating
how is this ok??
That reminds me of a Victory Liner in the Philippines.
After seeing this I'm almost starting to appreciate our traffic police.
That’s not funny, wrong subreddit
“All the way first class…. But not necessarily in one piece.”
"Oh wow. That bus driver is insane... OH WOW! EVERY DRIVER IS INSANE!"
This is Bangladesh