My company's Hyderabad office is located in Hitec City (wikipedia.org), which is a pretty slick place. It's nice in that things are very closely located. The hotel is a simple 5 minute walk from the office.
Luckily for me, a couple of my India team-mates came to meet us at the hotel and walk us to the office. Along the way, you need to cross a fairly simple two lane road. Note that this crossing does include a crosswalk. As we headed across this thing, I did so with my normal, I'm a pedestrian and I've got the right-of-way approach. When I got to the middle of street I looked to the left, saw an oncoming car and continued walking, with the expectation that the car was going to stop for me. Not the case. I came within a foot of being run over. The only thing that saved me was Vikas, one of my team-mates, bringing to my attention that I needed to stop and wait for the car.
Lesson 1 learned - pedestrians do not have the right-of-way in India.
Luckily for me, a couple of my India team-mates came to meet us at the hotel and walk us to the office. Along the way, you need to cross a fairly simple two lane road. Note that this crossing does include a crosswalk. As we headed across this thing, I did so with my normal, I'm a pedestrian and I've got the right-of-way approach. When I got to the middle of street I looked to the left, saw an oncoming car and continued walking, with the expectation that the car was going to stop for me. Not the case. I came within a foot of being run over. The only thing that saved me was Vikas, one of my team-mates, bringing to my attention that I needed to stop and wait for the car.
Lesson 1 learned - pedestrians do not have the right-of-way in India.
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