Aryan

Accidents do happen almost daily in one part of the country or the other just because we don’t care or start worrying about it only after the inevitable has overtaken us. It may be some boat tragedy in Bihar or a collision between a speeding train and a bus at an unmanned railway crossing, or hundreds of fatal incidents happening in the city or on the country sides.

Take road accidents. A rough estimate long ago put the number of deaths in India at around a lakh every year. It must be more now with so many vehicles with different descriptions entering our highways, city streets and village roads. No-one really knows the number of injured or those incapacitated for life. To what would you attribute these man-made tragedies? Speed kills, especially when the man behind the wheel goes beyond the legally permissible limits in certain zones of the city. You court disaster when you lose your sense of judgment and start driving after fully drunk at a dinner in a party or a hotel. Often, you come across the hoarding saying: ”Don’t mix driving with drinking”. It is a heady cocktail that can cause instant death for you, your loved ones or other innocent road users. And then there are those who care little about the traffic signals when the traffic policeman is not around. There are still others who ride zig-zag on bikes, cutting lanes without the least concern of other road-users, just for the thrill of it. But alas! The thrill does not really last long.

On highways between Delhi and Jaipur or Delhi and Chandigarh, one would daily notice a goods carrier overturned with the voluminous contents of the vehicle scattered on the road. Here, the driver, who works for prolonged hours for their living, wouldn’t even know when he fell asleep. Fatigue and overwork take their toll aided by a brake failure or a mechanical defect, all caused by the failure of the vehicle owner to get their vehicles checked up or serviced periodically.

In several road accidents, the Government turns out to be the number one culprit. Speed breaker or bumps are not properly marked with the result that the riders of two wheelers coming at high speeds can easily be thrown off their seats and can cause fatal accidents. Roads are in bad shape in many cities in many states. Different departments - the Electricity Department, the Telephone Department, Sewage Wing and the Water Department, working with the least co-ordination amongst themselves, dig up the sideways of the roads or across the roads by turn and leave them in awful condition, creating the right “atmosphere” for accidents. And nobody takes any responsibility, if any mishap happens. Apportioning responsibility or taking no responsibility at all is the style of governance in our democratic country. In turn, those potholes remain as they are because the Government says they have no money. The politicians have no political will to mend things on time and if someone dies because of the ill-maintained roads, then, well, “Who Cares”.

We have to give up the Chalta Hai attitude, if we are keen on preventing accidents.

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DevilisH

Aptly said Aryan da...

Another major problem I did notice here in Bangalore is jumping red lights in hordes on the Outer Ring Road. Even if a rider wants to stay in his place, constant honking and yelling around him forces him to jump the light. On top of this, if you have a huge vehicle right behind you, it will keeping inching towards you, all the while honking until you have let him jump the light or yourself move ahead. This has lead to quite a few accidents , when it was easily avoidable.

ankitmohan

truely said Aryan da, i have witnessed an accident which happened at unmanned railway crossing in amritsar between train and a auto-rickshaw, luckily the driver was safe, but still everything came back to normal after 10-15 minutes, everybody started crossing as they used to, as if "kisi ko koi fark nahi padta"....
its totally the fault of government....

accidents are increasing day by day due to these unmanned railway crossing...

God knows when the government will wake up to take some serious steps regarding it..

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k2cool_87

Another cause for these accidents is the lack of knowledge of personal limits or pushing them at wrong times...

ppl have to know what is the limit for them and their machines....understand them...know when to push them and when not to...its imperative that youngsters who often wanna test these limits know that they can do so in controlled environment and dont need to prove them to every person on the street....

(My 2 cents...)

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EL LOCO DIABLO

Though my initial reaction to this thread was to instantly retort to the claim, if i were to slightly pause for a bit i would say the accidents that i had to experience could have been avoided had i made a small and largely unnoticeable change at the time, the outcome would have been different.....or would it? See that's where the equation blows out of proportion, take any accident under the scanner and no matter how many times you repeat it, you'll still never know the outcome, the ratio between the variables you control to the ones you cant simply won't match at all. The largely cliched chaos theory wouldn't be out of place here, the culmination of events start from a very tiny action that slowly generates momentum, snowballing till the energy it releases explodes upon itself. And that's why all manufacturers research vehicles or for that matter anything upon it's destruction.

Though i understand that under this context people still don't control variables that they can and should, like proper driving manner and maintenance of the vehicles, even then the accidents caused by these factors would only contribute to the overall figure caused by accidents, never actually be the figure itself. But if we go a little deeper, we find that the major killer and cause for accidents would be a something so small, that i might be even laughed upon for saying it. It's loss of concentration that ranks the highest among all the other causes, a momentary lapse even a time interval of less than two seconds can cause a mile long pile-up. Sleep and fatigue is such a dangerous thing, that the US has stated it the cause for most deaths occurred on road.

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ken cool

One of the major points that Aryan has brought up is the case of long haul truck drivers. In ALL of Western Europe, they had introduced a system in the early 90s of an automated disc, something like a black box, that keeps noting the number of continuous hours the truck is being hauled, the number of hours it is at rest and other details. This not only monitors the behaviour pattern of the driver but also how the truck has been driven. They enforce strict laws where no truck or bus can run for more than 7 hours in a day.

Besides this, there is another point that cause accidents is the silly practise of us Indians of driving in High Beam. And no matter how much we discuss this here, come night and when we take out our cars, we will keep our beams as high as possible!

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ken cool

Thread moved to General Biking Discussions.

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satyenpoojary

Interesting article Aryan da, but I have a slight disagreement on one aspect! I have been fortunate enough (or was it supposed to be my misfortune) that I had a crash riding in 10KMPH speed when a dog appeared out of nowhere and torpedoed itself and go caught between the front and the rear tyre and throw me off the bike into a 'empty open drain'
Yes I can blame the Government for the free dogs, or the open drain, but then I can thank my luck as well for that! Just a freak accident that happened and was not made!

For everything else I agree, branding accidents as always an error will only deter a lot of people from riding and might add to the panick! At worse it would empower people who brand bikers as insane people!

Riding safety is something that I have been advocating to everyone begining from the kids in my locality, and the latest being pinning up the ridesafewith.me portal at my office! I know the change might not be drastic, but am hopefull that it would surely bring a slow and steady change!

While we can all complain, make noise about the Governments failure in providing basic road safety to us, we must also understand that like Ken said, we ourselves are at fault as well!

This was a an experience that I had shared on xBHP long ago..
The Value of Life

and am sure, even now, most of us would not stop and help someone in need!

My veiw of road safety is simple, I will be sane enough and will 'infect' others with this sanity.... I will not complain all the time, I would rather go upto someone and tell him that using highbeam all the time blinds the people coming from the opposite direction! Hoping they understand!

I would really expect a lot of us xBHPians to carry the good work from ridesafewith.me ahead and help 'infecting' others

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Mik

The problem lies mostly within us. Some of basic driving principles like,

a. Indicating before turning.
b. Giving way to the faster vehicle
c. Being aware while crossing the road
d. Consideration for smaller vehicles

are missing in us as a culture. Agreed that the Government has to do much more, but take Delhi for an example. The infrastructure here is fairly good with subways and over head bridges at roads like Ring Road and NH8. Still we see people putting their lives on the line and crossing the road in the heavy traffic.
How to change things.. By setting an example, not just for our families, but for friends and colleagues too. Surely most of us here have stories here of how somebody at work/friends/family bought a new riding jacket or atleast a better helmet after seeing us. A mindset change takes time coupled with strict governance. The helmet rule in Delhi ensures that commuters wear it, but we all know what happens the moment they cross the delhi border
So, only a people effort at an individual level will gradually lead to safer roads.
An initiative like ridesafewith.me by OF sir and Sunny needs to be promoted and replicated on the road. Something i liked about this was that non Xbhpians were forwarding me the link

scarecrow

good stuff Aryan. Another point i feel is that in India we dont value life, its only when it personally affects us do we stand up and take notice, though this is for a short time and then we get sucked into the regular rigmarole of life and totally forget about it

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