Self-organization on the streets of India

It’s no surprise to me that people are usually afraid of self-organizing behaviour. This video of typical traffic on a street in India shows why self-organization can be scary.

But the other thing to also notice is how well it works. In the comments on the video, someone remarks that 230 people a day die on Indian roads. But in a population of 1 billion people, this has to be close to or lower than the rate in Canada. And considering what this video shows – the near misses and cars driving the worng way and pedestrians weave through traffic, that’s remarkable.