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Actually, the hands off technique works only if all 4 wheels are aquaplaning. In India, on highways, water stagnates on the sides and hence you lose traction on one side, mostly the right.

You need to slow down before you hit the water (if possible. I look at the car ahead to tell me where the water is stagnated) and gently hold the car straight-ish.

In the Duster, the added peril is the water from the front wheel splashes on to the windscreen. So you have to do the whole thing blind.

Other than trusting to luck, how do you guys overtake lorries in rain? Scares the hell out of me.

Ironically our 4 lane highways (especially the fast lane!) are much more prone to hide these killer sheets/puddles of water due to inadequate drainage, unscientific road design (w.r.t. potential speeds) including totally wrong camber angles at curves.

Added to this is that even though locals may know the general locations of such puddles (probably causes by heavy rain earlier), the occasional/first-time traveler will not have ANY inclination.

I personally back of speeds during wet weather and also try and keep a 'local' vehicle 100m ahead of me to watch how that vehicle behaves.

Having said all this, at the end it is KARMA!

Slowing down during rains or when spotting puddles of water is basic community n sense and etiquette of driving. You simply can't drive as fast during rains as compared to dry weather.

Leaving aquaplaning aside, stopping distances are higher as the tyres don't have enough traction in wet as compared to when its dry.

I just drove through Kerala roads a couple of weeks back and I never exceeded 60 when it was raining or through puddles. Driving through puddles at 60 causes water to splash higher than the height of my vehicle .

The BMW accident is sheer negligence and overconfidence on part of the driver. Unfortunately, his two kids have become orphaned because of his negligence.

The accident and its intensity shows the importance of seatbelts. I would here after insist on even the rear seat passengers to belt up.

Analogous to the fact that pillion rider experiences more trauma than the rider himself is the fact that rear passengers in a car get more injured in event of a roll over /head-on collision. The basic mechanism is the rear person, if unfastened, flies and hits head on with the person in front thereby breaking both skulls and creating intense injury. So, it's imperative that the rear passengers are buckled up than even the front ones. Not that I tell the front ones needn't be, but you get the drift.

Everyone should be buckled up at all times!
Human beings are basically boiled beans in a metal jar with edges. Try that analogy and shake that jar. Ruined breakfast, that is.

I see a lot of people who,the minute they enter their society gates, or locality, unbuckle their belts. Why? Is that a power up zone where the belts will turn into a boa or something? We have to be the most illiterate drivers in the world, even our literate ones.

If you zoom in and look carefully you can see the speedo needle stuck just below 100 kms per hour. Am assuming some amount of brake force might have been applied which in turn means the car was doing 100 plus before aqua planing.

The lax important to safety is because of the poor circumstances in which we grew up. Not so long ago, till we purchased a car, and I am 23 now, our family of 4 used to travel on a bike together.

Imagining that today is scary. Our family bought our first car in 2003 and that frankly is just 13 years ago and not too long a period for attitude towards safety to change.

The rising accidents is a result of too much development too quickly and a lax attitude towards law enforcement.

In a matter of 10-15 years , all two lane highways on which max speed possible was 50-60 have become 4 lane roads with 120+ speeds.

And they were existing roads widened. And all existing roads at that point of time had an agenda to cover as many populated areas as possible. So roads reaching people was good as long as the speeds were low. Now we need roads that are clear from local people making their private u-turns through trees on the divider or driving on the wrong side.

It's a good thing to see that NHAI decided to elevate the roads when (by)passing through populated areas while 6 laning the golden quadrilateral. The next step would be to not allow settlements along the roads.

The BMW accident is eye-opening. If someone showed me a picture of the wreck and asked me to guess if the passengers made it safe alive, I would've replied positively provided they were wearing seat belts. I would like to think at least the front passengers should've been wearing their belts. Anyways, may the kids get the support and strength to deal with their loss.

Plain speaking and I appreciate that.

However my confession is that given the combination of our general highway conditions, mixed road and pedestrian traffic and lack of etiquette plus a random moment of distraction, I have found myself wishing that maybe I should not have taken that chance that I took moments earlier. For example, when we go on long drives, there could well be at least one sudden moment where we teeter on the edge of an accident whether our fault or not!

Hindsight is always very clear and all-revealing - all too often I am reminded that random chance can snatch a life away even though every precaution is taken!

Drive Safe everyone!

It's all about learning from that hindsight provided you were lucky to escape in the first place.

When I started driving, say the initial two years, I used to have coffee along the way. One fine day, I decided , why not try eating a burger as well.

While trying to put ketchup on the burger , mind you one hand holding the burger and the other holding the steering and the ketchup. While squeezing the ketchup I ended up slightly tilting the steering.

Thankfully there was mud accumulated near the divider which prevented the car from climbing the divider and hitting oncoming traffic on the other side . Mind you it was a four lane road and my speed was around 60. I got away without even a scratch on the car.

I never touched even a water bottle or chocolate while driving after that . I wanted to post this for quite sometime but it is quite embarrassing.

I used to think of myself as a great driver but one second of foolishness can ruin everything.

From that day till today , I have never got into a scary moment of my making .

So, Boleros are not alone in this blinding thing. I'm usually ready when i hit water. An extra steady grip on the steering wheel and ready to start wipers. :)

-- Torqy

Makes perfect sense. There is no point in deploying the airbags if the passenger is not using seatbelt. I wonder when the showroom guys will start educating their customers on what does 'SRS' stand for in 'SRS Airbag' rather than explaining the touch screen AVN, cooled glovebox & bluetooth streaming!!! SRS stands for Secondary Restraint System, which performs it's intended function only when used along with Primary Restraint System(PRS). So what is the primary restraint system in our cars? "The Seat belts". But the common Indian man doesn't want to know about PRS or SRS, he just wants an Asta variant (no offence meant) to brag about and drive it at 120kmph without any belts or buckles.

Dear Itwasntme - you are absolutely correct. We must learn from the German Autobahns. I have not driven on them, but I have sat in the front seat many times. These Autobahns are at a completely different level, designed and built to save lives. I have seen the speedometer needle of the Mercedes Benz taxi in which I was travelling, hover at around 180 kmph in rain, and I did not see or experience a single puddle. The car was rock steady. This was highway engineering at its best. :thumbs up.

I also remember the superb performance in the wet of a Citroen small hatchback taxi (like our Wagon-R) in which I travelled from the domestic airport of Moscow to the international airport of Moscow, a distance of some 70 odd kms. Its performance put many of our mid-sized cars to shame! I saw the tires at the airport, they were Italian Pirellis!

We have a long way to go!

Best regards,

Behram Dhabhar

OT: But it didn't have touchscreen ICE, blingy lights and 1 kg of chrome garnish, right? That's why Indian cars rock :D

/S

Statistically, it's most probable that the rear passenger/s weren't wearing seat-belts.

However, that doesn't mean it's the reason for the front seats getting moved forward in the impact. Don't forget that seats have their own weight, and hence their own inertia.

This was a tremendous / instantaneous impact, mostly due to the fact that the car hit a static concrete barrier weighing several tonnes.

It's a double-edged sword isn't it.

The safer the car, the safer you feel, the more you raise your limits on what's considered a safe speed.

But the fact is: the laws of physics apply equally to all brands.

When aquaplaning, you have no traction. With no traction, traction-control has nothing to work with.

The best thing to do for aquaplaning is avoid it.
Unfortunately there's really little you can do to "recover" from it, other than sit tight.

Here's an older thread on the topic : link

Well, you got lucky, didn't you?

If you hadn't been lucky -- would that have made you 'negligent and overconfident'??? Or just inexperienced and unaware?

Hope you get my point and re-think your statement + point of view.

Road safety is linked closely with common sense, experience and physics. Most people don't even believe a thin strap across their chest can save their life, let alone understand the dynamics of other things.

This is why awareness and education is so incredibly important if we want less people to die on our roads.