Traffic in Dhaka

So, just to give you a sense of where I live, this is a short video I took of the traffic on an average day in Dhaka. This road is one of the main roads near my house - about a 20 minute walk away from my apartment. Thankfully, there are many pedestrian overpasses on this road, which is where I took this video from.

Things that you might notice in the video...

-car alarm sirens that some of the buses install as their horns in an effort to get other vehicles to move out of their way (it's not terribly successful, and just irritates their foreign passengers (aka me) to no end!)
-people crossing the street despite the presence of pedestrian overpasses!
-rickshaws waiting to cross the highway (I was trying to get the video to include that sight as well, but didn't succeed).
-cars and buses cutting each other off constantly...

When I take a rickshaw and I need to go across this road, I always get off the rickshaw on one side, pay the driver, and then walk over the pedestrian overpass and get on another rickshaw. No sense in risking my life and his!! There are traffic police that stop traffic, but they are not always listened to and I am just not ready to risk crossing in a rickshaw when I can walk much more safely!

The buses are all dented and scraped along their sides from cutting each other off in traffic...pretty scary looking. Dhaka is not the place to drive if you are concerned about the condition of your car...you will get scraped and bumped by other vehicles.

The honking really got to me in the first couple of weeks, and some days it still does irritate me because it seems so senseless (why must we all honk when no vehicle is moving???) but for the most part now I can tune it out.

Traffic in Dhaka...always interesting!!