The Traffic in Poor Countries

Rohit Krishnan has an interesting article on life in India as a series of bilateral negotiations which make everyone worse off. Driving is the prime example of this – nobody abides by traffic rules, courtesy or even common sense. As he writes,

“India, modern India, has well defined lanes and beautiful highways. It also has absolutely no sense of traffic norms. Every inch of space is seen as a battleground to be won.

Like little Napoleons every auto rickshaw and car and honking motorcycle would try to shoehorn into the three inches that opened up in front. It’s like a game of whack-a-mole in reverse.

And everyone knows the score. You can almost see them constantly playing multi-participant chicken. “Good game” you can almost hear them thinking as you jump the car ahead where it shouldn’t have gone, just to block the bike that would’ve cut you off, while the rickshaw stands perpendicular to the flow of traffic playing the same dance and trying to cut across the roundabout.”

What I found striking about this was the universality of the experience in developing countries. Chinua Achebe, now most famous for having “Things Fall Apart” assigned in every 9th grade English class, wrote a book called “The Trouble with Nigeria”, in which he alleges the exact same thing. (Please pardon that the certificate on that link expired). It seems that every happy country is different, but every unhappy country is unhappy in the same ways. Beginning on page 28, he writes:

“I have carefully observed the behavior of Nigerian drivers in their notorious and regular business of turning a minor hitch in traffic flow into a complete deadlock by racing out of line and blocking every inch of the road. … Another reason against complacency is that the lunatic fringe spreads daily by recruiting from the borderline of the sane. As the climate of indiscipline settles firmly on the land,the reasonable driver who stays in line begins to look more and more like a dummy, a naive fool who may be doing what the book says but will get nowhere at all because "this is not Britain or America but Nigeria."

There is indeed no better place to observe the thrusting indiscipline in Nigerian behavior than on the roads… The amazing thing about the Nigerian road today is that there are no traffic regulations and no traffic police. For a start, there is no speed limit. In America where highway motoring is a major national activity, where a driver's licence is not purchased under the counter, where cars are well-built and well-maintained, where no sudden surprises like unfilled pot-holes, abandoned wrecks or stampeding cows lie in wait for the motorist, there is yet a strictly enforced speed limit of fifty-six miles or eighty-eight kilo-meters per hour. Now, who has ever heard of a car in Nigeria (unless it is crippled by two flat tyres) doing eighty-eight kilometers per hour? At a hundred and fifty kilometers or a hundred and sixty and more, you would still not be the fastest man on any Nigerian road. That is nearly double the speed Americans permit on their meticulously monitored super highways.”

When I see the needless horror and death we bring upon ourselves on the roads I ask myself: How can intelligent beings do this to themselves? I think there can be only one answer: We have given ourselves over so completely to selfishness that we hurt not only those around us but ourselves even more deeply and casually that one must assume a blunting of the imagination and sense of danger of truly psychiatric proportions. Rampaging selfishness is another name for indiscipline,and its prime objective is to free the self from a constraining sense of another and of fair-play. Mr. B sees Mr. A ahead of him in the queue or in the traffic. He does not reason thatMr. A is there because he took the trouble to arrive early. He says instead: he is where I want to be; he must give way to me. In the scuffle that follows, someone will get hurt. Even the prize for which the queue was originally mounted may get smashed in the fray. But these are already remote, unfamiliar considerations. The prize now is the action.”

Achebe turns this into a meditation on the quality of Nigeria’s leadership. Indiscipline on the part of the citizenry is not good, but it can be checked by the law and the disapprobation on the part of others. Indiscipline on the part of leaders is invariably fatal. To Achebe, the nation follows the example of those who are in power, and if they behave thuggishly then others will. I was quite struck by this passage, a bit farther on.

“I must now touch, however briefly, on the grave undermining of national discipline which the siren mentality of Nigerian leaders fosters.

In all civilized countries the siren is used in grave emergencies by fire engines, ambulances and the police in actual pursuit of crime. Nigeria, with its remarkable genius for travesty, has found a way to turn yet another useful invention by serious-minded people elsewhere into a childish and cacophonous instrument for the celebration of status.

In other places the movement of presidents and governors is a sober, business-like affair. In Nigeria it is a medieval chieftain's progress complete with magicians and wild acrobats chasing citizens out of the way. Has it never occurred to anybody that the brutal aggressiveness which precedes a leader's train leaves a more lasting impression on the national psychology than the hollow, after-thought smile and hand-waving two minutes later? Is there no one in this country perceptive enough to understand that after two decades of bloodshed and military rule what our society craves today is not a style of leadership which projects and celebrates the violence of power but the sobriety of peace?”

I cannot pretend to know why some countries are mired in coordination failures, and why others are prosperous. I have hope that the failures are not inherent to a people, and are the result of circumstance. People’s expectations can be changed by economic growth, or by good leadership.