i became the traffic i used to blame

i used to think traffic was something outside me.

when i was on a bike, cars looked like slow moving boxes taking up too much space. at signals, i would find every small gap, slide between cars, move ahead little by little, and feel like i had hacked the city. it felt normal. everyone was doing it. if there was space, you took it.

then i bought my first car, a volkswagen virtus.

suddenly, i was inside the box.

the same bikes i used to ride like were now cutting in front of me. the same small gaps i used to enter now felt like someone invading my lane. pedestrians crossing anywhere, autos stopping randomly, bikes appearing from blind spots, people honking for no reason.

nothing new had happened on the road. only my seat had changed.

that is when i realized something simple: in my country, everyone is both the problem and the victim of the problem.

as a biker, i wanted speed. as a car driver, i wanted discipline. as a cab passenger, i wanted comfort without caring too much about the road. each version of me had a different opinion about the same traffic.

this is why full self-driving on roads here feels so hard to imagine.

it is not just about cameras, sensors, maps, or ai. the real challenge is prediction. our roads run on eye contact, small guesses, sudden decisions, and a shared understanding that nobody will fully follow the rules¹1: funny enough, this is something i am actively working on: full self-driving for roads here, including the way people actually behave..

a self-driving car can learn roads, but can it learn impatience? can it understand that a person standing near the divider might cross at any second? can it know when a bike is going to squeeze through a gap that technically does not exist?

the technology is difficult, but the bigger problem is that our roads are not predictable systems. they are living, moving negotiations.

buying a car also changed my mood in a way i did not expect.

earlier, travel was mostly about reaching fast. if i had to go somewhere quickly, i took the bike. if i had work to do, i booked a cab. but driving my own car made going somewhere feel different. i reached places fresher. i felt more present.

there was music, air conditioning, silence when i wanted it, and a strange happiness in just moving through the city at my own pace.

the virtus did not just give me a new way to travel. it gave me a new way to look at the road.

and maybe that is the funny thing about perspective. sometimes it does not come from reading or thinking deeply. sometimes it comes from buying a car, sitting at a signal, and watching someone do exactly what you used to do.