You think you can drive??

[Slarti]

At Dhaka airport, having been in Bangladesh for a week. The traffic here is ruthless. If you give way, your journey stops. If you hesitate there's a chance you'll crash. Pedestrians walk onto apparently lethal highways without looking at traffic, but somehow everyone drives around them. People play cards on roofs of buses while every pot hole and ditch causes the bus to bounce off the ground. In spite of all this and more, I didn't see a single collision. The tuk-tuk drivers here are bloody geniuses! Clarkson is yet to visit this place, but what a place! No surprises then that I didn't see any Astons here!

[Jay_Davis]

So how is that different than New Jersey?

Of course, we have a law mandating that animals be strapped in when driving in a car.

[BingoBob]

That's not a very nice way to refer to New Jerseyans.

[yeti]

Very similar to India by your description...

However, stay there long enough (I worked there for 4 years) and you'll see it go horribly and tragically wrong many times

They're a fatalistic people, what will be, will be. It's not a great outlook for a long life! Just servicing our 4 desert rigs, we lost half a dozen drivers a year. Banned them from night driving, breathalysed them daily, speed limited and monitored their vehicles, nothing helps. It's all attitude.

[George H]

It sounds like a more extreme version of Jakarta! They had the amazing ability to turn a 4 lane road into about 9 lanes

There was a Lamborghini owners club that drove around in it too

Wasn't there an article in the Aston Martin magazine about someone driving a Rapide through India recently?

[F1NDW]

George H said:

It sounds like a more extreme version of Jakarta! They had the amazing ability to turn a 4 lane road into about 9 lanes

There was a Lamborghini owners club that drove around in it too

Wasn't there an article in the Aston Martin magazine about someone driving a Rapide through India recently?

I've done a bit of driving around Jakarta, bloody nightmare, never got upto much speed except around 2AM. And nobody seemed to care which way they should have been going or on which side of the road. Must admit I dont fancy trying it in India. Value my life too much!

[Rex Racer]

Well, since this is turning into a "describe your experiences with crazy traffic" thread, in Hanoi you need to cross the road through the traffic, which consists of tons of mopeds that never stop. You just start walking with determination and the traffic magically dodges you. If your confidence lapses and you hesitate, however, you're likely to get hit.

[F1NDW]

Rex Racer said:

Well, since this is turning into a "describe your experiences with crazy traffic" thread,

Sorry Rex I thought that's exactly what it was!

[Slarti]

Well, I've been to a few countries in the region including India, Indonesia etc and none of them so far have a damned thing on Bangladesh. Yeti, you're right - a lot of fatalism going on, people really just don't think about the consequences. I saw a guy ridign a scooter with his wife on the back who was carryin a baby! The weird thing was that both parents but not the child were wearing helmets! I really do think there's a massive pool of motor sport talent there though, the way theyre constantly engaged, dodging, weaving, avoiding multiple collisions by a whisker every time is just amazing.