In the latest trip posting at
http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/4x4-of...ic-places.html I mentioned about a incident that I am describing in details here.
I was one of the the invited volunteers at the Raid-de-Himalaya which was to start on October 2nd. As usual a day before the event we have to be in Simla to receive all our instructions and collect all things that are needed for setting up time controls on the route to be followed by the Raid. I was to do duty as the first control on day one and two. Therefater I was to go to Leh as area in-charge while the Raid did a loop around Kaza and then headed to Leh.
So on evening of September 30th after finish office for the day myslef along with my son and a friend of his strapped our selves in our Grand Vitara. The journey to get out of Delhi took two miserable hours from Okhla.
Once past Delhi border things started becoming easy and we enjoyed zooming through the Painpat overbridge. This has really cut down driving time through Panipat by 30 minutes and well worth the Rs20 toll. A halt at Karnal dhabha for dinner and we were looking for target time at Simla 0100hrs on 1st October.
Just beyond Pipli we were crusing at 140+ and having a great time talking for upcoming days and listening to music and chatter on the Karnal radio Mantra 91.9 FM. This is when I noticed a car ahead of the Tavera upfront breaking. So did the Tavera and I. It was a sudden and heavy breaking but with ABS I came to full stop without a thought. Just as I came to a full stop I looked up into RVM and uttered "OH **** HE IS GOING TO RAM US"
The trailer truck behind me was not stopping in time and I had no place but to roll forward few feet between me and Tavera to lessen the impact and ....BANG! The truck hit our rear door. Consequently we also hit the Tavera in the back.
A second or two later i opened the door and jumped out at the same time cuationing my sone and his friend not to come out on left side withouut watching out for traffic streaming past on left. We were in the right most lane.
The front damage was minor with only a broken bumper - it held up as such for next ten days to Leh and back) and relatively minor dent on the Tavera. The qunatum of impact here was not sufficient to damage radiator or even mis-align head beams.
Now the back side. If you have noticed all truck have a small ramp in the middle of their bumper (Ralph Nader would have railed againt this as unsafe at any speed) used by helpers to clean the windshield. This had hit the rear mounted tyre of the GV and had pushed the door in. The door fastner had held on and slight bending (twisting) of the door pillars occured. Rear glass was intact and so were the rear lights!!
In the meanwhile passengers from Tavera - who were going to Mata Vaishno Devi - also poured out and strated berating the driver of truck for causing all the damage. I on the other hand was stunned although mechanically inspecting the damage etc.
I was stinned imagining the impact if i had not moved forward those few feet and ofcourse hurting for the GV being bent out of shape.
Anyhow after exchanging all vehicle numbers and phones and getting apologies from the truck driver we all moved on. I was driving my vehicle keeping look out for any heating or vibratiions. None. The car did 140 without a problem except roar of wind over the damaged rear door.
So the lesson is while you may be able to to break or maneouver better watch out for the other guy CAN HE?