Accidents happen

So yesterday, on the way to work, our car happened to get into an accident. It wasn't anything to serious, just a scratch on both the cars,  but what happened afterwards took 3 hours.


We had left the house at 8:15, slightly later than usual. As we reached the road that would take us out of Dwarka and lead us into Delhi, we saw that there was a huge traffic jam. Now, to get onto the road, you can either take a left turn (which is at a 90 degree angle) or you can take a softer left turn, which allows you to merge into the road. It looks something like this:

This picture was made possible by contributions from Paint

As you can see from the picture, when out car and the other car tried to merge, there was a collision. It wasn't a huge collision; our car happened to scratch the other car, while the other car's left hand side mirror scratched the side of our car. Apparently, slight scratches are daily occurrences for Indian drivers, but the driver of the car, who we later realized work for as a driver for a taxi company, wanted my uncle to come out and look at the scratch on his car. He was ready to stop at the point of the accident, but we moved slightly further down the road so that a huge traffic jam wouldn't form around us (if one thing goes wrong on the road in India, in five minutes, there is a traffic jam). 

When we got down from the car, we all saw the scratch on his car. In all honesty, it wasn't that big of a scratch. And it wasn't like our car didn't have a scratch; it did, almost from the front of the car to the back. My uncle pulled out the insurance papers and was willing to pay for any damage, but the driver refused. He was adamant on the fact that the police should be called to assess the damage and the payment. I later learned that it was because the scratch was so minor that the insurance company would not pay anything to him, so in hopes of earning some money, he called the PCR (Police Control Room). In the mean time, he had called some of his friends who were also taxi drivers. One came and tried to act as the mediator between the two sides, telling my uncle that if he just gave 1000 rupees to the driver, the problem would be resolved. A thousand rupees is a lot of money in India, and the damage done did not amount to that amount, so my uncle promptly told him that the police was coming and that they would decide (he realized that both drivers just wanted to earn some money, so they asked for 1000 rupees when 200 would have sufficed).

Now, in the US, when someone dials 911, the police usually respond within 5 minutes. In India, it took one and a half hours for the police to come, after both him and my uncle had dialed 100 (the 911 of India) multiple times. This is a major problem. If the police can't come within 5 minutes, then how can anyone expect the ambulances or fire brigades to come within 5 minutes? It would probably be quicker for someone who is having a heart attack to be driven to the hospital than to wait for an ambulance to come. No wonder that some places have taken to nickname the PCR "Police Cannot Reach". 

Anyway, after the police came, they assessed the damage on both cars. The police in India look something like this. Personally, I would be more afraid of American police than Indian police, but according to my mother, in the long run, you should be more afraid of Indian police (perhaps because for many the police have become synonymous with corruption). After looking at the damage on both cars, they stated that they couldn't tell how much the compensation should be (for both parties) and so decided to take us to the police station in Dwarka. At this point of time, I was dropped off at home, so the next part of the story was told to me by my aunt and uncle.

When they reached the police office, they were taken to the desk of the inspector. According to my aunt, many times one of the police officers told her that she could sit in the car, but she refused, wanting to hear the inspector's judgement. According to my uncle, this helped their case. After hearing both sides of the story, the inspector promptly scolded the taxi driver for wasting the PCR's time with such a minor accident. The taxi driver then proclaimed that my aunt and uncle looked like the type of people who would run. The inspector scoffed, saying something like my aunt and uncle gave up going to office to come to the police station. Did they really look like they were going to run? He made the taxi driver write in a book that the scratch on his car was the same as the scratch on our car, and that he expected no compensation. He told my uncle that if he wanted to pay something. Although the driver had lowered his initial amount to 500 rupees, my uncle eventually paid him 200 rupees. This all ended at about 11: 30, taking a total of 3 hours. My uncle went to work afterwards, but for my aunt (who works in the Reserve Bank of India), it didn't make sense to go back to work. 

By accident (no pun intended), both my aunt and I got a break from work.