The Language of Jakartan Car Passing

In Jakarta, car drivers love to change lanes incessantly and tries to overtake other vehicles on the road. They do it to the point of breaking the law and sacrificing the safety of theirselves and others.

Even sicker, some of them do it with very lack of manner. They'll pass the other car in a very thin distance, or immediately put themselves sharply in front of the passed car, or doing it while honking dramatically.



But actually, because most of the drivers do that too, a horrific traffic flow created, and the acts of passing other car in the roads of Jakarta most of the time do not result in significant difference of travelling time. It doesn't make them far faster nor does it make them permanently in advance than the passed cars.

Unless they have the chance to drive very fastly after overtaking several cars, which rarely happen due to high density of the road, they will usually be in relatively same flow as before. They might be several cars ahead of the overtaken cars, but very often they will face random obstacles of slowing down cars, hole in the road, crossing pedestrians, bus taking passengers, or - what happen most of the time - just another changing lane car that blocks the way forward.

Despite the futility of it, Jakartans don't seem willing to forgo that actions anytime soon. Which leads me to suspect that actually it has nothing to do with logical objectives of being faster or shorter travelling time, nor it has any immediate correlation with the physical environment of the road.

Those acts of passing other car incessantly is not merely their reaction towards a condition, but instead a force of habit. They do it impulsively and obsessively without thinking or reasoning and they do it anyway despite the risk.

The habit of course rooted itself on their behaviour in addressing the conditions of the road, which then leads us to see their psychological state that materialised in their "driving language" (in comparison with "body language").

What does the Jakartan drivers' "driving language" says?

It might says that the other car is just too slow and simply blocking my way to advance; that, here, look at me, I'm faster than you; that they are more capable than the other driver; that I don't have time to be spent tailing you; that you must get out of my way; or that you slow people deserve to be punished. In short it only says about displeaseness and anger.

What does it tell us about their psychological state? Aggressivity. The roads of Jakarta have made Jakartan drivers become aggressive half-insane mindless and mannerless creatures. Poor people.