This is a link to 1 minute of video of an uncontrolled intersection somwhere in India (based on the title). If you threw 2 drivers with experience only in the USA into this fray, I have no doubt there would be endless carnage.
I have a new understanding (and appreciation) for a couple of cab drivers I have previously badmouthed.
I am simply not worthy.
Being an American driver that chose to start driving in India, I can say that all it really takes is a little bit of practice, and then you’ll forget all about the “great” road conditions of the USA.
But really, the video is played fast, so all those vehicles are going a lot slower in real life. Which just means you have to be prepared to brake early and often.
This reminds me of Vietnam…
A lot of Vietnamese drivers in Australia have a bad reputation, but I gained a new respect for them when I went to their home country. The point is, your average Asian car driver in their homeland will be highly skilled (because of conditions like in the video), but the average Asian driver in a western country will have initial problems because they didn’t drive at home). Most people ride scooters and only the wealthy or taxi drivers or other professional drivers will have four-wheel experience, and scooter traffic flows differently over there.
In Vietnam, traffic lights mean the same to cars as they do in the West. But for scooters, green means go straight and steady and red means you can go, but it’s your turn to do the weaving through the cross-traffic. Similarly, when I was riding in a van over there on a busy highway, the driver would edge left to see if it was clear to overtake. Now, it’s never clear to overtake by Western rules - it’s just too busy - but he’d edge left and look, see a four-wheeled vehicle approaching, and edge back to try again later. On the second attempt, there were no cars or trucks, but there were still a thousand oncoming scooters, but they were invisible, and so you overtake. The scooters flow like molecules of water, and they just went around the van. Some even went for the grassy verge, but there was no panic, it seemed quite normal, and nobody got angry. IT seems to work.
The rule is simply big trumps small. And they do have trouble driving in western countries because the rules are different. I was really dangerous because I learned to drive in the US, then in Germany I learned to drive really fast (but follow stricter rules), then in Thailand where the rules are very lax, although maybe not so much as India, but I was used to going incredibly fast. My friends from the states were freaked when I drove them up BangNa-Trat highway, weaving around trucks and scooters at 120-160 kph.