One of the perks of my job is being invited to exotic locations to drive some truly epic cars, and yes, my friends curse me enough about it. However, amongst all the locations I’ve driven in, German autobahns are probably my favourite. Not just for the fact that the roads are great – parts of which still have no speed limits – but more so because the infrastructure is very well designed and the driving standards across the country are supremely high. So, you could easily be barreling along at high speed without a worry of some idiot suddenly pulling into your lane, as a result making a change of underpants a necessity. In my multiple days of driving in Germany recently, I did not face a single situation where a driver did anything to put him or others in any danger. However, the performance of today’s car is rising to such a level – I was driving the BMW M5 & M6 on this trip – that at times even the German roads feel inadequate to fully experience the performance capability of these cars. This makes me look back at what happens with such a car in our road conditions. With our mix of crumbling infrastructure, haphazard planning and absolute lack of driver training, the Indian environment presents a unique landscape to be driving cars in. In fact, in my conversations with people from other countries, most admit that if they are able to drive in India, driving anywhere else seems like a walk in the park. Of course, even for me, driving in a developed country seems so easy and stress free, mainly because you’re not expecting anything out of the ordinary happening – such as a cow popping in for a stroll on the national highway, which over here is de rigueur. And having driven some of these cars here in India itself, I can tell you the experience is anything but pleasurable despite the cars being as fabulous as they are. Given our road conditions, you can hardly even attempt to use the full performance on tap, with the road running out before you’ve achieved any decent speed. And this is before the tyres have already succumbed to the potholes that seem to be ever pervasive in our country. The biggest fear for me always though is of a pedestrian, or a cyclist stepping into my path while I’m going about at a fast clip, which is a common scenario on most of our roads. Having tried my best over the years to find places where one can drive freely in our country then, I’m mostly resigned to the fact that using performance cars is probably left best to the racetrack or some exclusive express highways of our country – such as the Yamuna Expressway. Any other road is simply too populated, too dilapidated or too dangerous to try speeding antics in. Maybe this is what they said growing up was all about, learning how to use the performance available to you responsibly. Which in our country seems to mean never using it at all.
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