I have often heard people saying “If you can drive in India, you can drive anywhere”. How true.Imagine driving on highway and you have a cyclist coming right against you. Why? He was trying to be on the “right side” only in the wrong lane! Poor cyclist is going to suffer most of the time. But imagine this was a scooter? Tractor? Car? Truck? Bullock cart?
This is almost daily occurrence on the great Indian highways and I do not have any statistics on how may lives are lost, or even worse people maimed for life, due to this singularly stupid habit. And yet there is not once single piece of legislation dealing with this. This should rate at par with intent to murder.
NHAI is doing a wonderful job of making faster and smoother highways but this is not going to bring down fatalities. On the contrary.
Even after three years my hair stand up with fright when I recall a “near miss” coming down the excellent divided highway from Chandigarh to New Delhi at night. In the fast lane I was behind a bus, with safe distance between us, that was over taking a convoy of truck in the slow lane. All of a sudden more by intuition I saw some reflected light under the chassis of the bus and I took an evasive action towards left between two trucks, not a safe thing to do. Next moment I saw the bus crash headlong in to a three wheeler with predictably sad results.
Did the three wheeler driver not understand that he was risking his and his passengers life with such stupid and extremely dangerous life? Did the passengers not realise the danger? Yes, the bus driver was blamed but was he really the culprit here? And for me, what really made me dive left? Or I would also have been part of the pile up with potentially horrible results.
Thank god this guy had his weak headlight which prompted me. What about stupid fools who drive without any lights, front or rear?
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