One turn too fast

As the Magazine Board Secretary of my college I am responsible for the college magaine 'Srijan'. This is a sneak preview for my blog readers of my main article for the magazine

One turn too fast

One error of judgment, one stroke of misfortune , a momentarily loss of control, one turn too fast.

And it’s all over!

Yes it just takes one moment on the road to change everything. It takes just one moment to turn a pleasure ride into a horror journey to a hell of pain and suffering. Death is sometimes a relief.

40,000 people die in road accidents in India each year. Maybe you might be laughing at the statistic but it means every five minutes a life is cut short on just another indistinguishable stretch of road. Each of those 40,000 people had to die a personal ,painful death. And yet the horror never hits us. The day we hear about an acquaintance or a close friend being killed or injured in a road accident I am sure most of us slow down a bit except a fool or an optimist of the top grade. I know because I vividly remember the day in 12^th class when a class mate was crushed by a bus while on his scooter. I never knew the guy even remotely but I can assure you that day I just pushed my scooter a little less hard and so did the rest of us.

You could wonder why the moral lecture? What has another death forgotten in the sands of time got to do with you? I say everything! Because YOU would probably be driving today or tomorrow. And when you get behind the wheel you ought to know the mortal danger you are in.

People talk of speeds as if it is a joke. They swap stories of 100 km/h and even faster escapades. But 100 km/h is 28 m/sec and its an obscenely high speed. 28 metres! Measure it and walk down the distance. Then try to imagine covering the distance in a second on foot. You cant. Its an impossible feat. And yet behind an engine burning fuel at a searing 700 degree centigrade we seldom think twice before using the accelerator.

Maybe some of that callousness would disappear if you were to see the results of rash driving first-hand. Because no description can fully describe the horror of being there. That one moment which seems to just go on, the sound of metal twisting, the wails of the wounded , the moans of the barely conscious, the horror of the onlookers and pain that is unimaginable. Of course there are people who can boast about walking away unhurt from the wreckage of vehicles unhurt. But they were just lucky. Death was just enjoying being irrational. Think about it is the five year old kid who survived unhurt in an accident which killed both his parent really lucky. Ask around and you will hear tales that will make your heart go cold.

Lets go through a scenario of an accident. Some one is driving, and suddenly he collides with another vehicle at high speeds. Maybe it was not his fault. Maybe the other driver was rash and drunk. But maybe he could have gone a little slower.

And now suppose that person is you. After that one moment you wake up to find your leg bent at an impossible angle. But your mind is too addled to comprehend that both your feet are broken and you just wonder what has come to pass. With the impact to your chest maybe your ribs have cracked ,impacting your lungs which are now filling up with blood. You are literally drowning in your own blood and there is nothing you can do. I wonder if anyone would like a scenario like this,' to wake up from an accident only to realize you are dying'. There are injuries that doctors can do nothing about other than just move on to the next patient who could probably saved . Also this is India, where you would probably be bundled by bystanders in a rickshaw and sent to a hospital which will probably refuse to accept you for the fear of a police case. Or you could be like my friend who was hit by a truck six in the wee hours on a national highway.

No one stopped to help and she lay there in a ditch, for over two hours, dying just 200 meters from the comfort of her home on a chilly morning. It turned out to be a beautiful December day. It was just not so bright for her.

Of course initially ,because of shock you will not feel any pain. You can stare at your mangled hands with indifference. But then if you can just survive for some time ,then the shock will wear out and you will start feeling pain that you never knew was possible . God forbid,if you had been driving recklessly before the accident then at that moment you are lying there hating yourself. You would probably do anything to go back and set it right. But this is life my friend, whats done can never be undone.

Of course if you are banking on surviving you could be in for a shock. A compound fracture could have you restrained on a bed for two months. In case skin and flesh got damage I can assure its another long long stay at the hospital. And a damaged spine could doom you to a life of dependency on others.

But if you can have the chutzpah to drive fast ,you should also have the ability to take the cure if and when the times come. Is not that only fair? But the cure could be anything -from long lonely months of recuperation, the guilt of having caused the death of innocents, a crippled life ,or even death.

So was my intention only to scare you? No, there is a message and its about driving safe. There are only two self -evident truths which I know of and they are that mixing drinking with driving kills and helmets save lives. Only a fool can deny these. So drive knowing the risks. Because the problem is not driving but bad driving. Bike bans are an unpractical solution to a never ending problem. The truth is that in this modern world we cannot eschew automobiles, because if we are not driving ,we are being driven. Because tragically a crash does not discriminate between the driver and the passengers. Being in a bus or riding a bike , hitting a vehicle or getting hit by another vehicle is not really different. The injuries pain equally bad. The tolls are tragically equally high both sides of the line.

There is a simple reason why I wrote this article, the way it is. Because if you can imagine the pain after a crash or even better see yourself lying unattended on a stretcher still, very still; then maybe you will just be a little easy on the accelerator next time.

Syed Ashraf Husain

T.E. Computers