I read recently in the news­pa­per (and chose to believe it) that there are some gazil­lion ille­gal speed break­ers in the city of Ban­ga­lore and around.

All of us liv­ing in this won­der­ful city, prob­a­bly have to undergo the tor­ture of these road cre­ations every day. What was sur­pris­ing was that the author­i­ties said they were going to look into this issue and take down all ille­gal speed break­ers. I am not sure how they plan to go about mak­ing this hap­pen. But let me tell you one thing — I was mighty dis­ap­pointed.

There’s a rea­son. I think we can con­vert these speed break­ers into tourist attrac­tions. Put up attrac­tive signs next to them, explain their exis­tence and also why they were cre­ated the way there were. Tourists could then go to dif­fer­ent parts of the city gaz­ing and admir­ing all these forms of speed break­ers, hith­erto unseen in their coun­try. Take pho­tos beside them and send them in to con­tests — “how many kinds did you see today?”

Don’t get me wrong – I totally agree that as Indi­ans we have no dri­ving sense and most def­i­nitely need these speed derail­ing devices. 1n a coun­try like India where speed­ing is more com­mon than not, and where there are at least a half a gazil­lion crazy reck­less dri­vers let loose on the roads, there undoubt­edly a require­ment for these handy imped­i­ments. With­out them, I have a feel­ing that our pop­u­la­tion would be cut down in half. All mowed down by road rage and reck­less dri­ving. Which might actu­ally be a great way to cur­tail our pop­u­la­tion explo­sion, but hold that thought.

I would ear­lier always come back from vis­its to coun­tries like Europe and the US in amaze­ment because their roads didn’t have any speed break­ers. Only later I realised that you have to credit the peo­ple there, not the roads.

But yes, in India, where cows, pedes­tri­ans, two wheel­ers, and chil­dren of dif­fer­ent sizes all cross the road using mul­ti­far­i­ous and unpre­dictable tech­niques and angles, I wouldn’t want to imag­ine a sit­u­a­tion where a dri­ver, going at around 100 kms per hour has to sud­denly make way for all of the above crea­tures with­out actu­ally even mildly touch­ing one of them.

We’re not a ter­ri­bly law abid­ing coun­try. It takes about five min­utes of land­ing in India to fig­ure that out. Of course there are dif­fer­ent signs indi­cat­ing at what speed you’re sup­posed to be dri­ving. But who cares right? In fact, ask any­one what the legal speed is on the Ban­ga­lore Mysore road and you’ll prob­a­bly get some inter­est­ing (and totally incor­rect) answers.

So speed break­ers, yes. I was try­ing to make a strong point here. Def­i­nitely required. But the prob­lem in our coun­try starts when all our neigh­bour­hood do-gooders get together and decide to build a speed breaker. I think their con­ver­sa­tion goes some­thing like this:
1) Per­son 1: We need a speed breaker!
2) Per­son 2: I totally agree. Ramu – cement/material lao!
3) Per­son 1: How does one con­truct a speed breaker?
4) Per­son 2: Who cares? It’s not rocket sci­ence. We have extra cement. Ramu – speed breaker banao!

And there you go. What Ramu finally builds really depends on his crappy mood. And pos­si­bly what he did or did not have for breakfast.

So ladies and gen­tle­men, I give you a cross sec­tion of Bangalore’s speed break­ers in vary­ing shapes, sizes and dimen­sions. Tourists attrac­tions that are just wait­ing to be dis­cov­ered by one inno­v­a­tive guide. He could go on to make mil­lions. “And this, ladies and gen­tle­man, is the rum­ble strip of death, Shivajinagar’s fore­most attrac­tion. It was built in 1999 when a chicken was mowed down in broad daylight.”

Enjoy! And feel free to add to these experiences.

This one is fairly com­mon, but don’t be fooled by it’s seem­ingly inno­cent looks. Only once you get closer, do you realise that it’s not that easy to clear. God help you if you hap­pen to be dri­ving a vehi­cle with low ground clear­ance.

This one is on the lines of the back breaker, but it’s a tad worse. Chances are that you will have to see either a masseur or a doc­tor after expe­ri­enc­ing the back breaker.

This is the clas­sic speed breaker built by Ramu I’ve men­tioned above, when every­thing extra left over from build­ing the road is dumped into the con­struc­tion. The result — a really, really, big speed breaker, pos­si­bly the height of a multi-storeyed build­ing.

Yes, this one is pretty self explana­tory — Ramu was on a high!

There’s no way you could miss this one. It’s every­where. This is a breaker which has seen much bet­ter days. How­ever, after a bout of rains or a few heavy lor­ries (which Ramu did not forsee), it starts dis­in­te­grat­ing. What results is a reminder of the days gone by. Be assured though — no one will think of bring­ing it down and putting it back in proper shape again (what is that?).

So this was Ramu hav­ing loads of fun and think­ing, why not add another curve to this speed breaker? And so on… till we have one with mul­ti­ple humps and at dif­fer­ent lev­els too. Just for a lit­tle vari­ety. Just in case you fall asleep at the wheel after a tired day’s work, fear not — there’s the curves of death.

And finally, we have the rum­ble strip of death, where one is just not enough. we keep addding more till we run out of fin­gers to count on. feel your body and bones rat­tle and get a thor­ough rat­tling work out on this one.

So there you go! Now, I am sure you have your own to share! At my esti­mate there would be at least a dozen or two dif­fer­ent types and vari­eties, but this is pretty much what my lim­ited sketch­ing skills will allow me to present.

Have one to share?

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