The death
of a popular senior federal minister of India in a road accident in Delhi is
certainly painful news for everyone in India. Unfortunately, the accident
happened, when his car was not even moving and was waiting at a traffic signal
for the signal to change to green from red. Exact details of what really
happened are not known. But what appears from the scanty new reports is that an
Indica car hit the car in which the minister was sitting on the same side of
the car, where the minister was seated. There were other occupants also in the
car, but they somehow all escaped unhurt. It appears that when the impact came,
the minister lurched towards the other side for a moment and then recovered. He
must have instantly felt something wrong inside him because he asked for a sip
of water and said that he should be carried to a hospital immediately.
Obviously
something major was wrong with the minister, because within next few minutes,
he passed away. All attempts made at the hospital to revive him failed and he
was declared dead. According to the federal health minister of India, "He
suffered cervical fractures and the oxygen to his brain and lungs may have been
cut off. His liver was ruptured and he lost one, two litres of blood,"
There are
couple of minor details, which become very relevant now. Firstly, the car in
which the minister was sitting was a Suzuki SX-4 sedan, supposed to have a
proper side impact protection built in and secondly it is a much heavier car
than the Indica car which caused the hit. The photograph showing the damage
caused by this accident clearly shows that the impact was not so severe at all
so as to cause death of the occupant of the impacted car. These small details
bring out one important and relevant question about this grossly tragic
incident; was the minister wearing a seat belt?
I am forced
to make a presumption here that the minister in all probability was not wearing
a seat belt for the simple reason that no one in India does that, at least when
seated at the rear of the car. If the deceased minister would have been wearing
a seat belt, we can safely assume that he would have been adequately protected
from the impact and that would have saved his life.
That brings
me to the main subject here; why are we so much apathetic or indifferent to any
matter of road safety, when we are fully aware, that the end result could be
deadly. Firstly let us consider the case of four wheelers. Use of seat belts by
occupants seating in the front seats of the car (that includes the driver) is
mandatory as per law. Though, I have seen many drivers neglecting this simple
safety measure. They would put on their belt, only when they know that there
would be a police presence nearby and do not consider it doing for their safety.
Many times, reasoning is made out that the Indian roads are so bad that one is
forced to drive very slowly, which negates any requirement of safety belts.
Nothing can be more far from truth. Firstly not all roads are bad and secondly,
the new generation of vehicles that are on roads in India today, have engines
that are capable of accelerating very fast. This means that in event of an accident
when you are accelerating, the impact can prove to be very deadly even when
average cruising speeds might work out to be much slower. Luckily, four wheeler
drivers in India tend to obey the laws to a much greater extent compared to
their brethren on two wheelers.
When we
talk of two wheelers, the abuse of law or misuse of vehicles is so commonly
prevalent that I do not know where to start. I think that most of the two
wheeler riders in India take a certain pride in bending the rules in their own
way. Carrying an infant in hands, while seating on a pillion seat; three or
even four riders riding on a two wheeler; carrying a rider on the petrol tank
of your motor bike or making him stand in front of the driver on a scooter, the
list is almost endless. In all such cases, everything is fine till there is an
accident. The readers can well imagine what the outcome is likely to be if
unfortunately there is an accident. Refusing to wear a helmet, while riding a
two wheeler, is so much common in my
home city Pune, that most of the people (including the policemen) have almost
stopped thinking about it. Everyone knows that for a person riding a two
wheeler without a helmet, the chances of survival are minimal in the event of
an accident. Yet for some unexplainable reasoning, people simply refuse to wear
them. The transport authority in Pune has recently made it compulsory for everyone
giving a driving test to wear helmets; a welcome step indeed.
Coming back
to four wheelers, I feel that transport rules in India definitely need to have
one change after this incident involving the federal minister. We need to have
a rule (such a rule might already be there, who knows?) which says that just
like the front seat occupants, the rear seat occupants too must belt up. It is
for their own safety. If such a rule already exists, it should be implemented
as is being done for the front seat occupants.
5th
June 2014
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