I have been meaning to write about the small irritants that we face every day as we commute back and forth to work and live our daily lives in ever more crowded metropolises. A lot of them, I realize, are avoidable, but we inflict them upon ourselves. They are community or government imposed restraints or misguided mitigations that could have been avoided in the first place if everyone followed rules and played nice. The problem with this is that the behaviors of the minority who are rule violators cause everyone to pay a penalty.
I will start with the ubiquitous speed breaker. When our residential community was built 8 years ago, we didn't have any speed breakers. After noticing how fast people were driving inside the community even after repeated exhortations, the community decided to put in speed breakers. This is a localized example of a phenomenon we see everywhere on public roads. Because people speed, the authorities think speed breakers are the only way to slow them down thereby penalizing drivers that drive responsibly with harsh thuds that cause just a tiny amount of degenerative change in your backbone every time. This I am sure has caused totally unintended consequences. People believe they can speed as much as they want until they are signaled by their authorities to slow down through the presence of a speed breaker. The effect of such speed breakers and the ever present potholes on Indian roads have caused car makers to build vehicles with higher and higher road clearance and often advertise it as a great feature.
I don't know why we need to ride or drive with high beam inside the city where there is plenty of ambient light. I am continuously blinded by them and I am sure I am not the only one who cannot see a pedestrian wearing dark clothes to the left of the oncoming car until the last desperate moment. I have tried playing traffic vigilante, flashing my lights at the oncoming car. One in ten cars get the hint and dim their lights perfunctorily. The authorities not only seem to ignore this problem, they actually accommodate for it; they build partitions between the two sides of the road and increased the height just enough to hide the headlights of cars coming from the opposing side. Car manufacturers have tried to mitigate the problem by manual or auto-dimmers in rear view mirrors.
This problem with high beams had an interesting ripple effect in my community. The security guards at the gates of my community like to look at the driver of an approaching car to see if it is a known inhabitant or a visitor and act accordingly. With the high beam this is simply impossible, so they decided to fight light pollution with more light pollution. They worked with the community officials to install bright LED lights facing the oncoming cars. This meant that the security area is lit up like a studio throughout the night; light that seeps into neighboring houses including mine.
I can go on. I see a similar phenomenon with security (either cyber or physical security), wherein in the name of security we have added inconvenience after inconvenience and we numbed ourselves to them as the new normal; my favorite example is flying in an airplane. This is a bit more controversial and a topic for another day.
R. Balaji
I will start with the ubiquitous speed breaker. When our residential community was built 8 years ago, we didn't have any speed breakers. After noticing how fast people were driving inside the community even after repeated exhortations, the community decided to put in speed breakers. This is a localized example of a phenomenon we see everywhere on public roads. Because people speed, the authorities think speed breakers are the only way to slow them down thereby penalizing drivers that drive responsibly with harsh thuds that cause just a tiny amount of degenerative change in your backbone every time. This I am sure has caused totally unintended consequences. People believe they can speed as much as they want until they are signaled by their authorities to slow down through the presence of a speed breaker. The effect of such speed breakers and the ever present potholes on Indian roads have caused car makers to build vehicles with higher and higher road clearance and often advertise it as a great feature.
I don't know why we need to ride or drive with high beam inside the city where there is plenty of ambient light. I am continuously blinded by them and I am sure I am not the only one who cannot see a pedestrian wearing dark clothes to the left of the oncoming car until the last desperate moment. I have tried playing traffic vigilante, flashing my lights at the oncoming car. One in ten cars get the hint and dim their lights perfunctorily. The authorities not only seem to ignore this problem, they actually accommodate for it; they build partitions between the two sides of the road and increased the height just enough to hide the headlights of cars coming from the opposing side. Car manufacturers have tried to mitigate the problem by manual or auto-dimmers in rear view mirrors.
This problem with high beams had an interesting ripple effect in my community. The security guards at the gates of my community like to look at the driver of an approaching car to see if it is a known inhabitant or a visitor and act accordingly. With the high beam this is simply impossible, so they decided to fight light pollution with more light pollution. They worked with the community officials to install bright LED lights facing the oncoming cars. This meant that the security area is lit up like a studio throughout the night; light that seeps into neighboring houses including mine.
I can go on. I see a similar phenomenon with security (either cyber or physical security), wherein in the name of security we have added inconvenience after inconvenience and we numbed ourselves to them as the new normal; my favorite example is flying in an airplane. This is a bit more controversial and a topic for another day.
R. Balaji
