Is it just Hyderabad or is this an issue in other major
cities as well?
When I first shifted to Hyderabad long long ago, the first
thing that shocked me was that there were no footpaths…to walk on. There WERE
footpaths, but they were mostly occupied by huge overflowing dustbins or tiny
shops or used for parking bikes. The little bits of footpath left had all sorts
of wires dangling from the poles all the way to the ground, and no way would
anyone want to walk through that!
So pedestrians have no other option but to walk on the
border of the roads - but then there are many instances when some vehicles
(especially bikes) come right onto the pedestrians, like they are invisible or
they don’t even exist or don’t have the right to exist coz they are
walking. A couple of times some bikes
almost went over my foot and many a time brushed against my hands.
A simple pedestrian rule is to walk in the opposite
direction of the traffic so that you can see the vehicles clearly. It is indeed
a very effective method. But what do we do about the vehicles that go in the
wrong direction? And that too, too close to the pedestrians (because they are
going in the wrong direction)? And these people don’t even bother to sound the
horn. Once a bike going in the wrong direction slammed into me – I did not
suffer any injury though, and the biker had the guts to say ‘What madam!’ !!!
Well, I got used to walking on the roads, and then came the
next shocker – There were no ‘usable’ zebra crossings!
If you are lucky, you will be able to spot the faded zebra
crossings, as most of the time, the vehicles (mostly bikes again) stop at
signals after the zebra crossing, like this:
Then you will have to
walk almost along with the vehicles going across the road to cross the road.
This is still fine, as you at least GET TO cross the road.
There are some other notorious roads, where there are no signals
which completely halt the vehicles (thanks to free lefts, no turns - so vehicles
can go unrestricted). On such roads, God save you while crossing the road. The
vehicles do not stop for even a milli-second, so pedestrians have to cross the
road by just walking between the vehicles, but the vehicles will just continue
to zoom past them , like they consider the pedestrians to be illegally
occupying space on the road by trying to walk across it.
While I myself have been in a pedestrian accident, I have
heard of many other accidents on the same road.
After these incidents, I no longer think it is sane to risk
crossing a road!
Based on Google Search, I believe Hyderabad is the most
pedestrian-unfriendly city in India. Sad, isn’t it?
