While driving in Indian roads, be an over-giver and not an over-taker
I was in India for a couple of weeks. I thoroughly enjoyed the ‘energy’ that was evidently abundant everywhere from kids playing inside apartment complexes to share-autorickshaw drivers shouting to get their passengers to loud announcements inside big bazaar and even after 4 days in Geneva, I still have not transitioned into the Swiss mode. I miss being in India.
But there is one thing that I don’t miss and I get angry when I think about it. It is the traffic and the extremely dangerous & insensitive driving habits. It is not that I was raised in Switzerland and visiting India for the first time. I was raised in these conditions and I used to drive also but this time it angered me so much for two reasons.
Reason 1: In my father’s office, there used to be a young assistant. He is from a village near Madurai and is from an extremely underprivileged background. Over the years, my father retired and this assistant started working in different organizations. His son scored 1146/1200 in the +2 examinations and this is a mark which is considered top of the top. What makes it special is that this boy studied in a village school and secured such top honours. The whole family was looking forward to a bright future with their son placing himself in a very very comfortable position to secure admission at a Top 5 Engineering or Medical college in Tamilnadu. But this boy was ran over by a speeding bus near his village and a young potential was crushed to death. I don’t know whose fault was that as I heard about this from my friends but the real culprit is ‘indiscipline’ while using roads and vehicles. No school or college is teaching anything to bring good civic sense to the citizens.
Reason 2: My father drove us to my birth place Palani, which is 119 kms away from my hometown and is a 2 hour drive. For the first 60 kms till Dindigul, we were on a highway with a partition in the middle and so I was fine. But once we started driving in the two way road between Dindigul and Palani, I was at the edge of my seat. Every one wants to ‘overtake’ at every point and nobody cares whether there is a turning, whether there is a vehicle coming in the opposite direction. I am sure none of these guys are leading the PSLV or Agni Missile launch and without them, a rocket launch can’t be done. What makes people rush? Why do people overtake? What happens if you go slow and reach your home 30 mins or 1 hr later? why would you risk your life and the lives of all the people who are on the roads because of such nasty driving? I still cannot comprehend.
When I drove in India, I used to drive so carefully. I always made a choice that the people who are sitting behind need to feel at peace with my driving as well as the other people on the roads. I never rushed, never drove faster than required and I have good reasons for doing the above. But for someone who drives fast risking their lives, what could be the reasoning?
146,133 lives were lost in 2015 according to BBC and a life is lost every 4 minutes in India because of a road accident. So many families fall below the poverty lines because of losing the bread winner to a road accident and the numbers don’t seem to decrease. Reports suggest that the number of road deaths are increasing steadily by over 4% year on year.
Civics and public behaviour are not taught in schools anymore. More emphasis is given on skills and less emphasis on behaviours. Collaboration, team work and patience are virtues that are alien to India and these accidents are a reflection of the lack of the above virtues.
When it comes to roads, there is one thing that is a constant and there are a few things that have changed over the years. When I was a kid, the roads were not great and there were not many vehicles. Today, we have fantastic roads, super powered vehicles, more petrol stations and a whole ecosystem for vehicles. But what was missing then and what is missing now is ‘discipline’. The whole country is allergic to this word. It not just the speed, quality that has scaled but also the indiscipline.
At this stage, what can be done? We can say that there could be training programmes, social awareness rallies etc. But we know that none of these things are effective. My friend recommended that we stop and slap every driver every one hour to create awareness for disciplined driving. He says it is practical advice as he believes that there is no other way to make progress immediately.
Since we don’t have a history of studying urban problems and solving them methodically, we can learn from other countries. Sweden is a great case study. Sweden’s roads have become the world’s safest, with only three of every 100,000 Swedes dying on the roads each year, compared with 5.5 per 100,000 across the European Union, 11.4 in America — and 40 in the Dominican Republic, which has the world’s deadliest traffic.
As a country, we need to move away from piecemeal solutions and solve problems using a systems approach that fits our context. For that we need to invest in studying the problem before coming up with solutions. It has to factor in all the challenges including why the drivers drive so fast on the roads — May be the driver didn’t go home for 3 days and feeling sleepy or because he is trying to save money by returning his rented car on time or may be the passengers are pushing the driver to go fast. We need to understand the real reasons and design policies/programs that will save 1000s of lives and their families. Road safety needs to be one of the top 5 issues in the government’s agenda.
If you drive a vehicle, please drive slowly and avoid the temptation to overtake. Just this simple act will save so many lives on Indian roads.
