Word: delhi
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...stranger sights of this sporting year occurred in New Delhi on the sixth stop of the Olympic torch's world tour. The eternal flame's five-week trip was meant to ignite worldwide sporting passion. India awarded the event appropriate pomp: television networks ran blanket coverage and main roads in the Indian capital were closed off, causing world-record traffic jams. But once the relay started, a look at the torchbearers revealed a surprise. Aside from a handful of lesser Olympians, India had chosen Bollywood stars and cricketers as the guardians of sports' supreme icon. The crowds were huge...
...city epitomizes the perfect storm engulfing Asia's roads, it is surely India's capital, New Delhi. Swarming the city's potholed streets are 4 million cars and trucks, 600,000 motorized two- and three-wheeled vehicles and innumerable bicycles and nonmotorized forms of transport ranging from trishaws to ox carts. There are also animals, everything from sacred cows to dogs, cats, monkeys?as well as countless pedestrians. The latter do not fare well in this free-for-all. New Delhi's newspapers recently labeled the city a "pedestrian graveyard." According to the capital's transport department, nearly half...
...course, being surrounded by sheet metal is no guarantee of safety. Poorly maintained vehicles, as well as a large number of tinny, cheap cars on New Delhi's roads, also contribute to accidents and injuries. Many domestically made cars do not undergo crash testing, and until a few years ago, economy models often lacked even rudimentary safety equipment such as seat belts. "These cars are designed for city traffic and people will take them out onto our 120 km/h highways and get splattered," says Sikdar, the Central Road Research Institute director...
...those lucky enough to survive an accident often find that their problems are just beginning because of the lack of emergency-medical services. An ambulance team sponsored by the New Delhi government has only 35 vehicles for a city of 15 million people. Up to half of those hurt in road accidents die on the way to the hospital. "In India, the victim of a road accident goes through three kinds of trauma," says Dr. Shakti Gupta of AIIMS hospital in New Delhi. "First is the accident itself, then the trip to a hospital. And if they manage to survive...
...were usually halted by governments when foreign aid for them dried up, the ADB report said. Indeed, the size and complexity of the challenge they face seems to produce resignation in some officials. "This city has more vehicles than Madras', Bombay's and Calcutta's put together," sighs New Delhi's traffic-police commissioner Qamar Ahmad. "If you combine this with the burgeoning population and outmoded road system, problems are inevitable...