Driving in India, the country with the world's highest accident rate, can be little short of a nightmare. Cows, camels and elephants squat on dimly-lit roads or amble through traffic; unmarked speed-breakers, the size of hillocks, appear suddenly in one's path and other vehicles always seem to be driven at breakneck speed, often by unlicensed, drunken drivers.
Other hazards include zigzagging cyclists, absent-minded pedestrians and, at night, unlighted trucks, buses and tractors heading the wrong way down streets and highways.
Indian transport ministry officials say the country's accident rate of one a minute and a death every eight and a half minutes is caused by bad traffic management, lax vehicle licensing laws and inadequate legislation to deal with traffic offenders.
India's outdated Motor Vehicles Act does not cover either pedestrians or cyclists, between them responsible for a majority of accidents. Pedestrians also comprise the largest single group in the traffic fatalities statistics - accounting for around 42 per cent of all deaths.
India's vehicle population multiplied 60 times over 40 years, from 360,000 in 1951 to over 21.3 million in 1991, but the road network of 21,250 miles of national and 1.33 million miles of state highway remains woefully inadequate. Nearly 160,000 additional vehicles - or around 600 per day - are commissioned annually in Delhi, which has the country's highest accident death rate of five people per day, but no new roads are being constructed or existing ones widened, leading to jams, pollution and chaos throughout the day.
Transport officials say they have set a target of drastically reducing road accidents from their current level of 350,000 a year - or 13.75 per 1,000 vehicles - by 2000.
They are also trying to persuade insurance companies and vehicle manufacturers to pay a small portion of their profits towards implementing road safety measures.
Meanwhile, herds of cows belonging to Delhi's roughly 3,000 unlicensed dairies cause havoc wandering the city's streets looking for shade, water and grass in summer's soaring temperatures.
Police officials say the cows are a menace, but they are powerless to clear them away as the municipal authorities are unwilling to help. There has also been little public pressure to get rid of them, since numerous neighbourhoods are content with the easy availability of cheap milk.
Dark-skinned cows, squatting in the centre of dimly-lit roads, are especially menacing at night, causing traffic to swerve dangerously away at the last minute, often with disastrous effect.
Officials admit many such accidents involve inebriated drivers. The police in Delhi, or indeed anywhere else, rarely stop anyone, however uncontrolled or rash their driving.
Some years ago traffic police officials in the city stumbled upon some "peculiar-looking" equipment which, upon investigation, turned out to be breathalysers purchased by a senior officer recently returned from Europe. This discovery caused much mirth, and after a token in-house demonstration the items were consigned to a large heap of unused equipment, where they have lain ever since, said a senior police officer who did not wish to be named.
Delhi municipal officials say that not only are they hampered by meagre resources in their efforts to control the cow menace; they also face another handicap: whenever in the past they have rounded up stray cattle and levied a fine of 1,000 rupees (£15) per head, they have invariably been beaten up by their owners, many of whom are professional wrestlers in their spare time. None wanted the experience repeated.
Meanwhile, drivers in the north-eastern states of Assam and neighbouring Nagaland often have to "bribe" herds of elephants blocking highways with bananas to ease their way through "tusker" road blocks.
For the unprepared or uninitiated, a row of banana stalls has sprung up to help ease traffic along the main highways servicing Assam's world famous tea gardens. "No matter how loudly trucks and cars blow their horns, the elephants refuse to move unless appeased with bananas," says a local forest official.
