Roads are slept on, walked on, spat on in India. Roads are used to store and winnow the rice crop, to dry acres of red chilis, to milk the family cow. Roads serve as temporary shops. Not only is every type of transportation found on every road, but every kind of living thing. Goats and ducks are shepherded in front of screeching busses.
Elephants stop dutifully at the red lights and waterbuffalo meander aimlessly and fearlessly.
While life in America is lived inside the car and not much else exists on the street, in India it's all on the outside. Bikes and lorries fight for their place. There are no traffic rules of the ordinary kind one finds elsewhere. Au contraire, everyone is a street person. It's a lawless land, India's highways, where each one makes up her or his own rules.