We Indians follow rules by exception rather than rule. The crime of drunken driving, which has claimed so many lives has been going on unabated. Loud noises are made in the media whenever fatalities take place due to drunken driving which die down in a few days. The mild laws to punish drunken driving have hardly proved to be a deterrent. If the offender happens to be well connected politically or officially then he goes scot-free. The main reason behind this is that we Indians have no healthy respect for the law. We invent ways to circumvent laws rather than obey the same.
This is in sharp contrast to the experience I had in Japan which I visited more than three decades back. Most of the Japanese are hard drinkers. Invariably on all the weekends they booze heavily and keep hopping from one bar to another and after all the fun and frolic take taxis to go home. Some of them who reside nearby their homes jog their way back home. The law is very strict on drunken driving with punishment of cancellation of license for three years
On one of the weekends we were invited by our Japanese colleague to his home for dinner. Our guest came personally to pick us up from our residence. During the dinner we were offered drinks by all the members of the house as per their custom. Everyone in their household, including his eighty five year old granny seemed to enjoy their “Sake”, the Japanese traditional drink.
However our main host, who is a hard drinker otherwise, refused to take even one sip as he had to drive us back home. We could clearly see the thirst in his eyes for the liquid with golden yellow tinge. The pity was that he could only smell the drink but not taste. We teased him saying that one peg will not make him a crazy driver and the Police will not find out but he was hardly in a mood to oblige. As Indians we felt that he was carrying this abstinence to the extreme levels. However in retrospect this only showed the Japanese respect for the law both in letter and spirit (No pun intended). No wonder, we did not come across any road accident due to drunken driving or for that matter accidents in our six months stay.
We also noticed that no Japanese crosses the roads when the “Red light was on” even in the middle of the night when there was zero traffic. Once when we attempted to cross the road with the Red light flashing we were promptly pulled back by a co-pedestrian. Obeying laws seemed to be second in nature for the Japanese and they follow the rules subconsciously.
