this video is really beautiful. they're using a completely different approach to sharing access to a contended-for resource than is used in, say, Melbourne. the approach we use in melbourne has an advantage that in an insurance situation, right and wrong is pretty clearly defined, whereas i imagine things might not be so clearcut if someone picked up a dent during this video. the advantage of the indian scheduling approach is that neither side seems particularly worse-off; traffic turning right over a major roadway just pushes in, where in melbourne we'd end up setting up traffic lights or a roundabout to reduce the worst-case delay. also, i think the indian system might be skewed to more minor (i.e. low-speed) accidents, as all drivers at all times need to be hyper-vigilant; making assumptions about right-of-way and steaming towards a contended-for intersection at 60 kph is just going to cause a major accident there, so people go slower on the major roads and exercise more caution. of course, i may be wrong about that - i'm assuming that the formal indian road-rule system is derived from the british and that they're just ignoring it for practical purposes, and i'm also assuming that the unwritten cultural rules about when to give way or not are sufficiently flexible that you really can't rely on them.

other observations:

• the least-agile vehicles, i.e. the largest, i.e. buses, oil trucks, etc., are never pushed-in-front of, and their drivers are careful to do dangerous things slowly.
• the pedestrian at bottom right who squeezes through a 50cm gap between a compact car and a motorbike 1/4 of the way through the video has my utmost respect.
• smaller vehicles often use larger vehicles as shelter, staying "downstream" while turning across a roadway. this happens at multi-lane roundabouts in melbourne, but not so often at uncontrolled right-turn intersections.
• before driving in calcutta, i'm gonna get me some of those goggles that give you segmented 180 degree field-of-view vision like a honeybee.