On the first day of Ramadan it’s 3:30, although more then four hours before one opens the fast with a soft, sweet date still everyone on the road is impatient. Switching lanes, blaring horns, and motorcyclists rushing as if they are on a mad race in a virtual dimension where they have several lives before it’s game over. And cars Screech-halting on every signal and a few even running through the red light. (more…)

After a long long effort to control traffic flow within the Defence Stadium circle area, the DHA has, after complete lack of success, launched its final assault on vehicles that break the traffic flow pattern that has been set up to eliminate congestion in the area.

Tyre killers

These tyre killers will puncture the tyres of cars that come from the wrong direction, while allowing the correct drivers to pass through.

I spoke with an engineer there, who told me that during the past week, DHA had received 4 complaints from angry drivers who lost their tyres to this device. Its interesting how people can call up and complain about something thats a consequence of violating the law!

Just a small recall of the times when you are on / near Shahra-e-Faisal and you are stuck in between a sea of cars standing still. You see an ever-increasing and endless trail of cars piling up from a point where your sight can’t even reach, after a couple of minutes you see a VIP protocol whoosh-by on the empty adjacent road and that’s when you feel like a…….. You know what! :)

Here are some pictures and a video… (a friend happened be in office (on Shahra-e-faisal) when he capture this on his cell phone, so the credits for the pictures and the video goes to Danish)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXV0Vw6Foo8[/youtube]

One thing that the drivers need to learn more than anything in Karachi is courtesy. If not because its ethical and civilized and all that, then to help themselves.

Here’s why:

The traffic at a round about or a non functioning signal is blocked and there isn’t a traffic policeman in sight. The four way bottleneck has resulted in chaos and every car is just trying to push through to make its own way out. While a few lucky vehicles are successful in zigzagging their way out of the mess, the traffic keeps building at the rear so that what probably started as one man’s impatience has snowballed into a major problem for a few hundred (and that is not an exaggeration).

That’s one way of going about of it but lots of Karachi drivers consider it the only way.
(more…)

Reckless and fast driving has more disadvantages than advantages. It risks yours and others lives, it increases the stress, it burns more fuel, and so on.

Here is an excellent article on advantages of driving slow. I myself was a reckless driver once but then gradually I learnt to drive slow and I never miss those days of crazy driving. I would highly recommend this practice to all of you.

As Mantissa pointed out in the comments section here, WHAT is it that makes our drivers keep their headlights on high beam — continuously, consistently, forever, no matter what!

(more…)

Yesterday, as I was driving back home on the largely deserted 26th Street from Khayaban-e-Badban, I seem to notice how some vehicles, (no less modern and flashy then the latest, automatic models of Honda) would absolutely refuse to drive in a single lane. And no, I’m mot talking about over-taking here, I’m talking about how some drivers have the annoying habit of cruising neither quite in the left, not quite in the right, but precisely some where in the middle of the two lanes, and hence essentially not driving in any lane at all! While this may not have resulted in anything significant on a largely empty road as the one we were both driving on yesterday, but at a busier venue and location, it would have surely resulted in needless blocking of the cars behind and a totally unnecessary disruption to the general flow of traffic.
(more…)

Nothing says “Be careful when driving” better than seeing what happens when you dont!

Surprisingly, none of the cars involved were from Karachi (atleast not with the distincitve yellow plates) all the more reason for us karachiites to practise extra safety. Just as a reminder, you dont just have to be careful about the way you drive, you have to be careful about the way others around you are driving as well.

Image Credit: khanana

No matter what the circumstances… this is *not* how you park a car!!