This works passably well when traffic is moving - but intersections become completely overstuffed and anarchic - generating a common sight in the Far East: intersection traffic so snarled that vendors come off the sidewalk and into the street to sell things like newspapers and drinks.

There’s no risk to the vendors. None of the cars is going anywhere.

Traffic would move much faster if everyone just stayed where they were supposed to be, but that idea seems too radical for those drivers to grasp.

I also had a very interesting ride in ‘private taxi’ along one of the ring roads. It was 3 lanes each direction. We were going clockwise, so in the inner 3 lanes. Oncoming traffic was much heaver, and drivers started to use our outermost lane as a passing lane. As more did it, they essentially ‘took over’ our outermost lane to give themselves a inner 4th lane. No signals or signeage, it was a grassroots critical mass kind of thing. After perhaps half a minute, we got our lane back again. It freaked me out, but my driver took it in stride and didn’t seem to think anything of it.