Akkare V: Driving here in America

This weekend was great fun! My friend, the illustrious, inimitable Mr. DPS, my college roommate for four years had come down from Chicago to LA. For public safety reasons, I am not giving you his full name which is longer than the Nile!!

And it was only during this week, did I realize that I have not done a post on driving here in America. Driving here is so different than from India. At times, it feels good and at times, it gets boring. Most of the cars here are automatic and a real car aficionado like me would not like it. I like manual transmission cars which give the driver a lot more control and flexibility while driving, but as I found out this weekend, Automatic transmission cars are a boon for people like my friend DPS who has just “Earned” his driving license.

Mr. DPS is a peculiar person or in other words, a quintessential arse! While sense rules the world, nonsense rules his world and I have now discovered that his limbs do not listen to his brain.
For example, when common sense would clearly state that he should slow down, his leg would press the accelerator and when his common sense might rule that 45 mph is a tad too slow on the expressway; his leg would press the brake. When we ask him to take the “right” lane, his arms would interpret that as “left” and vice versa.
According to him, driving on the right side of the road is the problem and not his sense of direction.
That ladies and gentlemen, is Mr. DPS for you in a nutshell; a person who will never accept his mistakes, as silly as they may be.

We had a grant time pulling his leg this weekend, and we had a harder time when it came to him driving. Since he had just received his license two weeks back, he was all geared up to drive and would not let any of us touch the steering wheel and it was Hilarious with a capital “H” (yeah we had insurance on the car)….

In the normal universe, driving might be something like this:
But in DPS’s parallel universe, the experience was totally different:
As you can all see, it took all of five mortals to drive the compact sized car and DPS would refuse to give us the key either. So we were caught between 100 % chance of DPS whining and a 50 % chance of going to the hospital and we chose the latter.

These Americans came with up with a rule long back, that all cars need to follow lane discipline and people generally don’t cut across lanes like we Indians do but as usual DPS was above the law. He cut across lanes without giving prior warning, drove in between two lanes; made an old lady cry and scowled when given advice. He also managed to drive on the left side of the road once and when we gently reminded him that it was not India, he followed that up with a smile as if to tell us that he meant to do it.

The driver also does not exactly inspire confidence when he asks questions like these:

1. “Can I change the lane now? Is it all clear behind?”
2. ”Can I drive at 100 mph (with a stupid grin)”
3. “What kind of signal system is this? I cannot understand it”
4. “How do I put the car into reverse?”
5. “What is this? Referring to the dim light button”
6. “Can I take a U-turn here?”

So, Ladies and Gentlemen, I am charmingly surprised that we escaped without a scratch or a dent even though we must have had a thousand curses hurled at us!!!!
And I leave you all with this photo of mine taken during this weekend (hollywood mountain):