It began like any normal road trip. A bright morning, the car warming up, and that familiar sense of excitement that comes before a long drive. I was heading from Delhi toward the hills, planning to pass Chandigarh and then Kasauli. The route, at least in my head, was supposed to be smooth, maybe tiring here and there, but nothing out of the ordinary. You expect some traffic, a few rough patches, maybe a couple of slow-moving trucks. Nothing more.
But the moment I hit the highway, everything changed. Driving in India doesn’t feel like going from one city to another. It feels like surviving a challenge that nobody warned you about. Every kilometre brings something unexpected, and every unexpected thing has the potential to go very wrong.
The first moment that shook me came very early. I was in the middle lane, maintaining my speed, when a massive truck drifted into my lane without any indication. No signal. No brake light. No sense of awareness. It simply shifted sideways as if it owned the entire stretch of road. I had to slam my brake, the car jerked forward, and I could feel my heartbeat in my ears. Behind me, another car swerved to avoid hitting mine. In any other country, this would have been an accident. Here, it was just another normal moment that everyone ignores.
As I kept driving, the road ahead looked wide and promising, but it never felt safe. Trucks sat in the fast lane and refused to budge. Cars overtook from the left. Nobody slowed down. Nobody cared about keeping lanes. Everyone was in a hurry, and everybody wanted to prove something. It did not matter whether they were right or wrong. The ego behind the wheel drove the vehicle more than the person inside it. The highway felt less like a road and more like a race track where nobody followed rules.
Then came the surface issues. Long patches of uneven tar. Cracked sections. Loose gravel. Rough edges that made the car bounce constantly. Every few minutes the sound inside the cabin changed because the tires hit a new type of surface. It was never smooth. It was never predictable. I found myself gripping the steering wheel tighter without realising it. My focus wasn’t on enjoying the drive anymore. It was on staying in control.
I also noticed things that shouldn’t exist on a major national highway. Road signs hidden behind bushes. Markings on the road so faded that it was impossible to see the lanes clearly. Entire stretches without cat eyes or reflectors. At high speeds, you depend on these basic things to guide you. But here, it felt like I had to guess where the lane was supposed to be.
The scariest part was the pedestrians. Real people running across the highway because there were no overbridges or underpasses for kilometres. Men carrying bags. Women holding children. People sprinting because their only option was to time the traffic and hope for the best. I slowed down for every single one of them because it only takes one wrong judgement to end a life.
Stray dogs ran across too. Some of them walked right on the divider. Some sat on the white line in the middle. Seeing their eyes reflect the headlights of oncoming cars sent a chill down my spine. They had no idea of the danger, and suddenly their safety depended on how quickly a speeding driver reacted.
By the time I reached kasauli, I wasn’t tired physically. I was mentally drained. Driving on these highways is not about how good you are. It is about guessing the next mistake someone else will make. Every driver around you becomes a moving threat. You begin predicting behaviour that makes no sense. You stop trusting anything you see. You drive not with confidence, but with doubt, suspicion, and caution.
The worst experience came on a different day on the Mumbai Expressway. This was at night, and I will never forget that drive. It was pitch dark. There were no street lights for long stretches. The road ahead disappeared into blackness, and I had to rely only on the reach of my headlights. The slightest curve, the smallest dip in the surface, even a shadow, everything became a potential danger. If a truck had been parked without lights or if a car came from the wrong side, I would have seen it only seconds before impact.
And in the middle of all this, life was happening dangerously close to the fast lane. On one stretch, I saw workers painting the divider. A man stood on the edge holding a red flag. His wife painted the curb. Their child played next to them. Cars flew past at full speed, just a few feet away. No safety jackets. No cones. No barricades. No warning. Just a family trying to do their job on a road that could kill them at any moment. That image stayed with me because it captured the reality of our highways better than anything else.
We build expressways and announce them proudly. We talk about infrastructure growth and expansion. But the truth is, numbers don’t matter when basic safety doesn’t exist. In 2024 alone, more than 1.8 lakh people died on Indian roads. Almost half of those deaths happened on national highways even though these highways form just a small fraction of the road network. That means these smooth, wide, expensive highways are some of the deadliest places in the country.
The problem is not just infrastructure. It is how we drive. It is how we think. Every overtake is done with ego. Every honk is a reaction. Every lane change is a challenge. We speed because we want to prove something. We take risks because we assume we are skilled. But the highway does not care about skill. It exposes the smallest mistake instantly.
What concerns me even more is how normal this has become. Everyone has a near-miss story. Everyone has seen an accident. Everyone drives with fear but hides it. We have become numb to danger. We shrug and keep going. That is the biggest warning sign of all.
On my way back from kasauli, the sun set slowly over the highway. The road looked peaceful, almost beautiful. But I had already seen too much to be fooled by the calm. Beneath that sunset, the chaos was still there. The trucks were still drifting. The buses were still speeding. The road was still uneven. The danger had not gone anywhere.
I reached home safely, but I did not feel relieved. I felt lucky. And that is the problem. Driving in India should not depend on luck. It should not feel like you escaped something. It should not feel like cheating death.
And at the end of all this, one question keeps repeating in my mind.
Why is this normal?
Is it our driving?
Is it the government’s lack of willingness to simply do its job?
Is it the absence of world-class standards?
Is it corruption, carelessness, or just complete indifference?
Why are we building expressways faster than we are learning how to use them?
Until we answer that, every journey will continue to feel like survival. Every arrival will feel like luck. And every driver on these roads will keep cheating death, one kilometre at a time.