Megha Suri, a doctor who had stopped to see if the motorcyclist needed medical attention, wondered: 'Why do we pay road tax if we have to run an obstacle course between fallen trees and potholes all the time?'

Kailash Chand, another driver, switched off his engine in despair when the traffic didn't budge for 10 minutes. 'I have seen two accidents on the way. As if the trees and red lights aren't bad enough abominable driving by some people is the last straw.'

Many of the capital's over 700 traffic lights had been short-circuited Friday and most of them remained on the blink Monday morning, traffic police chief S.N. Srivastava admitted.

'Traffic was affected. As far as the red lights are concerned, we had asked for their repair to be completed by Monday morning,' Srivastava told IANS.

He explained: 'While some have been repaired, many could not be. This is because there were a large number of defective lights and the repair agency could deal with only a limited number over the weekend.'

The traffic control room also received complaints of snarls from the busy Vikas Marg area in east Delhi, DND flyway to Ashram Chowk as well as Dilshad Garden in east Delhi and the Apsara Border that connects to Ghaziabad in the east, where a sewage pipeline had burst.