Someone rightly said that while driving within an Indian city, beware
of two type of holes – potholes and assholes and I couldn’t agree more though I
hate assholes more than potholes because potholes are for everyone alike but
assholes are the ones who have their way but the other drivers’ life is screwed
because of them. Now the best solution is to have a big traffic police force
which keeps a very tight vigil and nabs these idiots every time they try to
break a signal, drive dangerously etc. etc. but then our police force chooses to rather focus on the big ticket guys such as commercial vehicles which give them more
return on their time invested (if you know what I mean). CCTV can also help in getting the job done but I guess
that is more noise than action as I have been hearing that rant for a long time
but nothing has happened so far.
This made me think of a ‘Drive score’, which is like CIBIL
score for lenders, or a zomato rating for restaurant, or an Uber rating for a
driver. So this is an app which is free for all, on which people can report
incidents which are either not caught by police or can’t be proved like
dangerous driving (incl. overtaking from left without indicator), excessive
honking, standing in the middle of the road etc.
So imagine that you are driving on a peaceful day and this
car is honking very badly from behind, or a car overtakes from left without any
indicator and you put brakes just in the nick of time to avoid an accident, you
can simply stop and put the registration number and select the stupidity
committed by the driver. Every such incident will lower the score of that car
and we can do our bit in publicly shaming the driver of that car which is still
SOMETHING, compared to not doing anything at all.
There are a few questions which I thought and I am sure
everyone would have in mind
1. Who does it help?
Ans: Right now nobody but eventually it can help a) insurance
companies in understanding how dangerously a car is being driven on the roads. b) It can
also help cab companies like Uber and Ola in ascertaining how their drivers are
driving; currently only the passenger gives a rating which can be skewed also
as the driver and passenger might have a common interest in driving fast,
jumping signals. Also their drivers have a responsibility towards other cars on
the roads and not just the customer. And c) it will be nice to compare a friend’s
score with mine or to just find out how people perceive me as a driver
2. People can give fake ratings, or I can get 10
people to give fake rating for a particular car number?
Ans: It can definitely happen, but like all ratings
this too shall normalize over time
3. No action will be taken against the driver for
their action, then why bother?
Ans: Well it is for you to decide. There wouldn’t be
any action that is for sure. But you could still do your bit by reporting it so
that atleast his score comes down.
Please feel free to send more questions, I will try to
answer as best as I can. If not, I will gladly accept the shortcomings of the
idea.
Following are some of the acts which I have thought can be
reported:
- Excessive Honking
- Red Light jumping
- Stopping in the middle of the road
- Driving between two lanes
- Overtaking from left
- Dangerously fast driving (> 100 kmph within city)
- Wrong parking (behind an already parked vehicle making it impossible for the other vehicle to come out)
