Watch this crazy race between a bicycle and a car in Hyderabad's maddening traffic
Everyone thinks traffic in their city is the worst. Once in a while though, a resident might go out and actually try to show how bad things actually are. Meet Ali Naqi, a graphic design student from Hyderabad who is also @thisphotojunkie on Twitter. Naqi decided to test out exactly how awful it can be for car drivers in his city, by carrying out a Top Gear-style race.
Naqi's friend, Asad Hussain (credited as "professional city traffic driver" at the end of the video), got into a car to travel from Ameerpet to Secunderabad Club, a distance of 6.6 kilometres. Meanwhile, starting from the same spot, Naqi set out on a Hero Octane bicycle.
The two set out from Ameerpet a little after 7:30 pm, which is rush hour in the city. Google Maps makes it evident how hard it might be to drive around that time, by predicting a car journey that could take anything from 16 minutes to 45. And that solid red line of traffic above says all you need to know.
While, Hussain headed down main roads, stuck in traffic at some points, doing 90 km/hr on others, Ali raced past some crazy two-wheel traffic and even took to the sidewalk to get ahead and to stay safe.
"It is absolutely terrible, because the traffic was so bad when I was riding and since they didn't have a footpath, I had to ride on the far left lane of the road. I was almost knocked down be several cars, at so many points! Once a bus almost hit me because he hadn't seen me. But, please, wear a helmet and reflective (or neon) clothing. It is often overlooked, but this shit can save your life!" Ali wrote, on reddit.
The result is predictable but no less fun to watch: Ali manages to make it almost a whole ten minutes before his friend in the car, which just goes to show how much fun a Hyderabad commute is for those who get in their four-wheelers everyday.
The ensuing discussion on reddit also gave Ali an excuse to offer his pet theory for how traffic is different in the big cities. "Hyderabad has people who drive like the road is theirs, Bangalore has drivers who keep jumping signals (which surprisingly I don't see a lot in Mumbai has drivers who cut you ever so subtly, and you wont even realise it!"