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Comment by bluGill | Hacker News Reader

In india if you hit someone after sounding your horn you are not at fault as you gave warning and they didn't move. (It is far more complex than that but as always the real truth is too complex for a comment box - if you are trying to drive safe it is close enough, but this isn't a license to murder), As a result all drives will honk their own if there is any possibility someone might cross in front of them.

India is getting a lot stricter about driving rules, and I hven't been there for a few years. I would expect the above to change as people realize that the horn doesn't really work for that purpose anyway. But change is always slow.

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Was something like 20 years since I was in India, but IIRC at least back then they didn't have a "priority to the right" traffic rule, but rather some kind of "the one who first honks has priority". Traveling in a taxi felt suicidal, drivers just honked when approaching an intersection and continued blithely.

Based on a quick googling, this seems to no more be the case, and there is a 'priority to the right" rule.

I saw something similar when visiting Latin America a few years ago, in a neighbourhood friends lived in. Some people would just go full speed in residential streets and hold the horn while crossing intersections because I guess that's what's gonna keep their car intact?

Latin America is “just” 33 countries each with their own culture (not to mention Brazil with its massive size).

Yeah, I know. I just don't want to self-doxx by mentioning the country.

I also don't think this is part of any specific culture, mine or someone else's, it's just something I saw in one neighbourhood.

By priority to the right do you mean a French style priorité a droite? Or American style stop sign priorities?

Neither system describes how Indian traffic works, which is much more of an iterated cooperative fluid dynamics simulation, with the main rule being ‘don’t drive into people who are in front of you’.

And they drive on the left, so priority to the right makes no sense.

> By priority to the right do you mean a French style priorité a droite? Or American style stop sign priorities?

I mean

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priority_to_the_right

That is, unless there are other signs overriding it (like yield or stop signs), you must yield to someone coming from the right in an intersection.

> And they drive on the left, so priority to the right makes no sense.

Not sure that matters. The important thing is to have a consistent rule that everyone can follow. Whether the rule is to yield to the right or left doesn't per se matter, nor does it depend on which side of the road you drive on.

I do agree consistency is probably the most important thing, but deciding which side should go first can have differences based on if you're driving on the left or the right.

Imagine a 4-way stop of 1 lane each way roads. Cars drive on the right in this example. One car rolls up traveling from west to east and another car from south to north.

If we give priority to the right, meaning the south->north traffic, they end up out of the way of the other car sooner than the car on the west to east traffic. They only need to cross halfway before they're unblocking the other traffic. If we give priority to the left, meaning the west-east traffic, the west-east car needs to cross the entire road before they start to unblock.

I ride a bike for a few months in India. The honk system worked quite well. As a small vehicle, you learn your place on the road. Largest first, even if you honk. Honking at every turn in small town works ok, but it is loud. so loud.

Ah wow, this explains so much about the idiot who didn't know how to use a 4-way stop and nearly drove into me the other day. I thought he's giving me a hard time, blaming me, when I had the right of way. Maybe he was just doing the "warning because he might hit" thing?

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