Yesterday I was driving down to Vijaywada from Hyderabad in the morning. At 125 km, just a few km before Suryapet I noticed a few trucks standing in the road. Obviously there was a road block. There was no vehicle coming from the opposite direction. I decided to drive on to reach the front. Just as I was nearing the the front and was wondering as to how to make a truck driver to give me some space to squeeze to the left an amblulance pulled up behind me with its lights flashing and siren blaring. I was in a quandry. I was blocking its way. I couldn't give way as there was a line of trucks on my left and the road dropped to five feet or so to the field on my right. I was feeling enormoulsy guilty and praying if one truck driver could move a bit.
Luckily one driver started his vehile and turned left, almost 40 degrees, to give me way. I squeezed through the gap and let the ambulance proceed. There were 5 vehicles in front of me. Within minutes they started inching forward. That's when I saw the dreadful sight. A tata ace was lying on its side facing me. It was loaded with aluminium ladders. There was this truck, again facing me, but off the road on the right, sitting in a kneeling positon, its front axle missing. As I was passing close to the overturned tata ace I noticed its front had been completely smashed up.
Then I saw the most gruesome sight. The body of its driver was haning out of the smashed vehicle. There was nothing above his shoulder. His head had been pulverized and only some hair was visible where his head should have been. I suddenly felt a pang of guilt. Did I contribute to his demise by not allowing the ambulance to come forward. I knew I blocked the ambulance for about 15 seconds. I stopped and got out of my vehile to find out. What I gathered was that the accident happened about 5 minutes ealier. The driver of the tata ace died instantly. There were a couple of occupants, greviously injured. It was for them that the ambulance came. I was relieved.
There are a couple of things I want to mention: the ambulance service called 108 (started by the infamous Satyam company) does an enormous job of helping accident victims. I myself can vouch for that. Just last week I happened to witness a man being run over by an Innova in Begumpet area of Hyderabad. I dialled 108 and the call was answered at the first ring and the ambulance came withing minutes.
Secondly, very often we drive through when we see the traffic that came to stand-still. Especially we do that when we see a long line of trucks. Very often we don't know what caused them and if we are in a small vehicle we assume that we can squeeze through. My question is whether it is wrong to drive forward on the wrong side in such situation. Should we just wait behind the line? To my defence I have instances where I found long lines of trucks standing at places (once an incredible 40 km line of trucks, on my way to Jamshedpur from Kolkata) and if I chose to stand behind them, I would never reach my desitnation.
Last edited by Jaggu : 5th April 2009 at 20:51.
Reason: Readability, paragraphs help
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