Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Two traffic intersections, two very different results

Why... are there so many accidents here:



but not here:



Could be selective editing, but I wonder if it's a normative thing. Indian drivers face these types of intersections more frequently, so they've developed and follow norms on how to drive in them.

What do you think?

4 comments:

Gruntled said...

Two ideas.
1) The Russian intersection is regulated by a light, whereas the Indian turns are not. The Russians trust the expert system more because there is one; the Indians know they are on their own.

2) Most of the Russian accidents seem to be from a car in the third lane being hidden by a car in the second from the sight of the oncoming (cross street) driver. If the Indians were trying to turn three lanes of cars across three lanes of cars, they would have more accidents like that.

Joseph said...

ice is a big factor is many of the russian accidents.

the average speed in the russian intersection is higher.

there are lots of pedestrians/bikers in the indian intersection, causing drivers to be more cautious.

Brad Wright said...

Makes me wonder, though, why the Russian drivers aren't more cautious. I guess having a light there means not really having to pay attention... what you, Gruntled, call the expert system.

David said...

Drinking could also be a factor. Russia ranks near the top in alcohol consumption--I'm not sure about India, but my guess is it's pretty low. A number of the Russian drivers seemed to just ignore what everyone else was doing, which suggests they were impaired in some way.