For people who drive to office everyday (like me), B'lore roads are hell. Roads are pathetic, potholed, cratered like the face of the moon, with ditches every now and then, filled with every sort of 2/3/4/5 wheeler vying for the same piece of so called road. It's crazy. Imagine the fact that I stay 14 Kms away from office (BTM Layout to E-City) and it takes me an hour and a half each way every day in my car. The same stretch takes close to 15 minutes without traffic.
This is unimaginable loss. Take the number of hghly paid people who are on that road each day, multiply by the loss in productivity, the extra fuel burnt, the extra wear and tear of idling vehicles, the effect on moods and tempers, the time not spent with family or in leisure, and we are talking about a substantial economic and social loss.
Do we care? Does anybody care? Does the police care? Those poor suckers are busy treating the symptoms, not the cause. They are outnumbered by bad tempered drivers and the massive volumes of traffic. They lack scientific means and measures of traffic control. (Any police force in the world which thinks a breathe-analyzer is a nose stuck inside the mouth is neanderthal to say the least.) What about the educated company-wallahs? They sit inside their corporate busses or vans and read the newspaper, or gossip about the day, or sleep while their drivers run amok on the roads and scare the heebie-jeebies out of all the rest of the poor folken like me.
