Driving in Dhaka

I have mentioned this some before, but there are a few peculiarities about driving here that have become more apparent to me as I have begun learning to navigate the streets on my own. To start, driving on the opposite side of the road and car is bizarre. I occasionally move to the right side of the road instinctively when driving in the neighborhood (out on the actual roads this isn't a problem). Sitting in the right hand side of the car to drive gives me the feeling of having an amputated limb that was sown back on the wrong side of the body. Instead of having five feet of car to my right, it has been transplanted to my left side, leaving me feeling clumsy, awkward and confused. This is an especially precarious situation as Dhaka presents many opportunities to drive mere inches from oncoming traffic. I generally just play it safe and let the advancing car pass before I drive on, but this is far from the regular custom here, where everyone seems to be in a giant hurry to inconvenience anyone else on the road. I have not really had any "scares" yet, though the first couple times behind the wheel I probably drove a little closer to a pedestrian on my left than I had intended. Luckily, everyone drives like that here, and pedestrians almost expect you to give them a little brushh-back. Often they will walk right down the middle of the street as you drive towards them, only moving just enough to let you pass... this works with me but many local drivers will accelerate towards this street wanderers to intimidate them out of the way.
Mirrors are simply for show. The rickshaws do not have them, and so communicate exclusively with outstretched hands (often coming after the turn begins), and little bells. The baby taxis have mirrors, I've seen them, though they appear to have little or no function. They seem to operate under the assumption that if a space is open in front of them, there could never be a car racing into it from behind. As a result they poke their metal noses out in places they have no business being. A neat trick is flashing high-beams at oncoming traffic when there is only space for one car to pass at a time to let them know you are going to gun it. (Don't ask what happens if they flash at the same time).
Honking is the way that everyone on the road truly communicates. Honk at the pedestrian to say "don't cross streets on a lengthy diagonal." Honk to the rickshaw to let them know they need to get to the side and let you pass. Honk to the baby taxi to let them know you exist. Honk to the other cars to say hi. Honk as you approached an unmarked four way intersection to let other vehicles know you are coming because that ain't a four-way stop. Honk because you are stopped. Honk because you see a woman. Honk because you have a horn.

There are some customs, but there are basically no rules. Sometimes the streetlights mean something, but often they are just empty and ignored symbols, discarded as soon as the traffic officers depart. At a certain point at night giant intersections become a free-for-all, the later it gets the nuttier the driving. Sometimes baby taxis will just decide that the lanes no longer have a proscribed direction of travel so you have to beware of the oncoming traffic. I do not know the whole history of automotive travel in Bangladesh, but I picture it going something like this: many cars began coming into the country but there was no infrastructure to manage the new technology. People learned to drive, but were forced to develop a system of not running into each other from scratch, with a brand new technology. There is no mechanism that I can see for actively and effectively patrolling the roadways, so essentially there are no laws. It is as if you one day dropped hundreds of thousands of vehicles into a society that had no experience with automobiles and said "go for it!"

Here's an example that may best communicate the skill and what we would consider "common sense" of the general driving community in Bangladesh. We drive a white Toyota Corolla. It is a fine car, handles well, good brakes. When I put it in reverse, the car beeps. Now, you may assume that the car is beeping to let people and vehicles around me know that I am backing up and may have less vision than in forward motion. Yet I soon realized that the beeping is only audible from the inside of the car. That is, the beeping is for ME to know I am in reverse. What kind of a driver could this be intended for, who does not even recognize the direction in which he is traveling? Just your average Dhaka driver.