Lanes and (Lack of) Lane discipline. Let me start by presenting my credentials,
I live in bangalore, which is some what notorious for its traffic, but during my life
as a techie, I have had a chance to visit quite a few cities in Europe and US, So I can
at least make a comparative judgment on those cities and the Indian ones.

One of my friends while riding (our bikes), remarked that with the supreme court
passing the judgment to impose hefty fines on erring motorists, the traffic problem in bangalore ought to reduce.

While I don't deny the ease of driving in western roads, I think that the present state of Lane discipline is suited for us than the well regulated flow of traffic present in those cities.

The difference is that compared the western roads, the vehicle density in our cities
is huge, While the simplistic solutions like lanes, and traffic lights provide an
acceptable solution when the number of agents (vehicles) is low (where it approximates a linear problem), when the number of interacting agents becomes very
large, these solutions break down.

When faced with a non-linear problem, one of the best approaches in our repertoire is
what is known as emergence, Essentially what we do is to let the individual agents compute the best values for themselves, which leads the system as a whole to a global
optimum.

When we look at the state of our traffic now, this is exactly where we are, Each
agent computes the local optimum for himself, causing the road to be used more
efficiently than otherwise.

To expound my argument further, most of us have seen bikes, moving through the
vehicles filtering to the front when there is a red light. While it certainly
increases the amount of stress involved in driving, at the end of the red light,
you can see that the road is more packed than it could have been if the bikes
did not do that. (You can also observe this effect in low speeds).

It certainly increases the difficulty involved in driving, but that is because
the burden of computation is passed on to the individual agents (that is us).

In a not so glowing terms, the difference is perhaps that between a well planned city and a haphazard shanty town. In terms of the comfort of living, the well planned city
is much much ahead compared to the shanty town, But in terms of the capacity
(density of population), shanty town is very much ahead. While the city is mostly
static, these shanty towns are highly organic, with patches of building occurring
fast where it is possible, and getting shifted as fast when the use for building
in that particular spot has diminished (perhaps due to exhaustion of resources).
The pathways between dwellings go through the same kind of evolution, paths getting created and discarded very fast according to the needs to those around compared to the very static (and lesser used) flyovers of the city.

Coming back to the original point, While we should certainly think increasing the
driving comfort in our roads, With our current infrastructure, and the number of
vehicles on the road, I think it would be a disastrous idea to go for implementing
the order for heavy fines.

Do not get me wrong, I am not advocating that the traffic rules should be thrown out
overnight, What I am advocating is that let these rules be guidelines, that could be
overruled based on the condition of individual agents at ground. More importantly,
let the agent decide for himself whether to follow them or not in that particular instant.

i.e: The incentive for an agent to keep to the left side of the road is simply
that the left side of traffic moves in the direction that he wants to go ! :) and there would be enough pressure from the agents on the right side (both polite and otherwise) for any agent to keep with the mainstream.

At the very least, we should go for careful simulation of traffic before going
forward with things of this sort.  ¶ 1:43 AM