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-   -   Accidents in India | Pics & Videos (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/road-safety/109249-accidents-india-pics-videos-1706.html)

And yet, the statistic that we Indians kill another Indian every four minutes on our roads does not register with us. We lead the world in showing how the automobile is a lethal weapon.
We also will not help a victim, we prefer to video him/her while their life is leaking out on the roads in front our eyes. We have many things to be ashamed of as Indians collectively and this is one of the leading nasty traits.
So this is one thing to also remember - have an accident and no one will be there in time for you and your family members that are injured or mangled on the roads.

PS: I keep reading that this indifference is because of our reluctance to get entangled with the police and a change of laws for bystanders is needed to address this issue. I do not believe that this is why we are indifferent; we are like that only - as a humorist would say. Laws have nothing to do with it. Indeed, even a law banning this will not stop us from taking videos and perhaps even selfies.

As a Bangalorean, I've seen this city grow to consistently be number one in bike ownership, be it Kinetic Honda, Activa, Dio, Bullet, Pulsar, Avenger or KTM, this city has lead in demand and consumption for as long as I remember. As a result I've seen more than a few people become statistics from riding.. 2 in high school (yes both were 15 and were riding illegally), one from college and if I were to tell the details of that accident, I'd doubt if anyone reading will sleep tonight & one neighbor just 6 months ago riding a Ninja and on top of that I've witnessed many minor falls, trips, bumps and knocks that've lead to heavily abraded arms, torn pants and unconscious riders. These things don't surprise me anymore.. unless maybe I stop witnessing them.

I get it, riding is a raw/visceral experience.. I've ridden the Avenger and it felt like I'm lounging while going at 60 kmph, kinda like how birds glide. However I've always kept away from riding and shall always do so, given today's traffic this is the last thing I intend to do. I find myself looking at travel as merely a point A to B exercise today, leaving room for actual hobbies that I have and will continue to find in due course. Seeing so many people succumb to accidents hasn't scared me, rather I understand the reality of the road much, much clearer than the average person.

Travel, be it on rails, 2, 3, 4 wheels or 2 wings, always has an element of risk to it, however fact remains that logically, reduced travel and/or choosing a means where there are multiple layers of protection between passenger and earth reduces the possibility/degree of harm drastically.

Making the below comment assuming these 2 victims were unconscious.
I am not an EMR, but moving the unconscious victims so sitting position is not a good idea. I did a CPR and First aid training, and the EMRs specifically asked us not to move victims of falls/accidents. Unless there is possibility of fire, or further injuries, the victims should not be moved. If this victim has had a spine injury, they can make a bad situation worse. Much harder to breathe, with head hanging down like that. If they are breathing the best option is to place them in recovery position. Below is what they taught me at the training.
https://patient.info/health/breathle...s-unresponsive

I dont know where our bystanders got the idea of making unconscious people sit and dump water on them.

IMHO the problem starts with parents, as soon as their ward completes schooling, the 1st requirement is a bike, even without seeing if the person is mature enough to drive it. Most of these youngsters are foolish enough to believe the faster they drive, the more “HIP” they appear and nobody to warn them. I guess safety on the road should be a major subject in schooling if these accidents have to be controlled.

The simple reason is nobody has taught them what to do in case of such emergencies.

To be honest for some years now my nightmare is killing someone on our roads. Someone that does something overwhelmingly stupid, and someone that breaks the rules in a manner that overcomes all my defensive driving, landing under my wheels via a blind spot somewhere. This suicidal behaviour by other road users, notably two wheelers and pedestrians, is rampant these days at a time I am not getting younger and even if it isn't ones fault, there will be a burden of immense guilt to be lived with.

+1. I am always at my wits end when driving on our highways and have pretty much started avoiding the fastest lane due to the shrubbery on the medians. I have also stopped expecting a basic level of road awareness (leave alone a heightened level) which means now I need to treat every other individual as an idiot. All this is a huge kill joy as you can't enjoy the drive without worrying over hundreds of other things.

When our educated individuals do not know basic road sense (quoting my message below) one simply cannot be too careful. It is not a joy to drive on our roads, it's a chore and it will be for the foreseeable future.:Frustrati

Really sorry for your loss. May God give strength to the bereaved family.

Unfortunately, we can only minimise the probabilities. Driving/riding slow helps to a certain extent. Sad reality is even these steps cannot protect you 100%. With the rule of law and value of life diminishing everywhere around us, these things will only get worse. :(

Drove back on NH4 to Bengaluru yesterday during afternoon and evening hours. I always think how we have so few accidents and mostly its because of luck.

People always try to sneak in the safety space you leave in front of your car when a slower vehicle is on their lane. Some times they do this very close to you with the vehicle in front of them also being close to them. I kept honking when it would be difficult to let them in since it would involve me slowing suddenly. Its certainly over the point where only you have to drive safely. You have to be defensive most of time about others. And thats really bad.

I stopped driving during nights almost a decade ago when I lost one of my friend in a accident in US, also because of careless truck driver.

I share your nightmare.
There is nothing much we can do to help change their behavior.

So, just to cover my base, I installed dashcams in my cars.
It records every minute detail of what happened just before the event, how did the event unfold etc.,
It records date, time, Long/Lat etc., and has everything for a court to accept as proof.

I have a man run across my car, in the night, while I was doing 80+, on a flyover.
This is the perfect combo plan for a successful suicide and without a dashcam, even my wife wouldn't have believed me :D

:OT I agree to almost everything that you have mentioned here but at the same time I would also want to add my inputs for the PS part.

On my way to office one day, morning around 11 AM. I was in my colleagues car, sitting at the back. Those who know Pune(This was when you go towards Hinjewadi from Bhumkar). This complete stretch of bhumkar to my office(10-12 kms) takes 45 mins on an average daily, meaning you can not drive faster than 40-50KMPH even if you want to, barring some stretch.

We saw some crowd gathered at one place, when we reached the spot, one person with helmet on, was being loaded in a car & one bike had been moved to the side of road. The person who was being loaded was unconscious. Some passerbys were pointing towards a bolero kind of vehicle stating that it hit the rider. We did not see what exactly happened. I called the police control room, gave them details of everything I knew/I heard of including the number of suspects vehicle. They said they will send some one, I left for office.

Two days pass by, I receive a call again from the police station. The rider had died. This had made it to the news. Hence they were forced to investigate this. They verfied the details again including the number of vehicle. I repeated what I could gather. I recieve few more calls in the days that followed.

One fine morning, I received another call from the police station. They asked me to come to the spot and explain everything that i saw. I and the colleage who was with me at the time of accident went there hoping that we could of be some help here. We reached there, few minutes later a van loaded with 8-10 policemen reached there as well. We explained everything, showed them the spot, we also told them that we did not see who hit whom, all we heard was people shouting about this bolero who hit the rider.

They wanted us to be the witness of the accident. I told them we did not see it happening, we did not see anyone hitting anyone. I don't want to implicate any poor soul just because someone else thought that his vehicle hit the rider. They still wanted me to confirm that this particular vehicle hit the rider. I denied. They asked about my hometown, where I work. They said they will get in touch with the HR, who will for force me to go and be the witness. I told them so be it, but I am not signing anything which implicates some one falsely. They almost warned me of the consequences of not being the witness.

We left. I was scared. I was nervous. I hated picking up calls from unknown numbers for a couple of days. They did not trouble me again but this experience is going to stay with me for a long period of time. This will not stop me from helping anyone in future, but it will definitely stop me the third or the fourth time.

You don't need speed to get knocked out cold. The only time it happened to me, I was on foot, and the collision was with another pedestrian!

Maybe I was about ten or twelve years old, and leaving school for the day. I ran around a corner, smack into somebody else, and fell over backwards. Head on ground... out cold. Only for a short time, but it was certainly concussion. I got home in a daze (and my parents were angry with the school for letting me go) and felt pretty weird for several days.

Very sorry for your loss.

The following comments are pertinent. Apathy, lack of any interest other than self[ie], and complete lack of care and concern in these situations is one the things that makes living and driving in this country scary.

As an Indian-born friend of mine said, to survive a major accident in In this country, you have to get lucky at least three times...

1. Surviving the accident itself.
2. Getting any help at all, and in time.
3. Not being killed or permanently disabled by the well-meant efforts to get you out of the vehicle.

I am surprised about this after all the publicity given to allow the uninvolved person that is helping, to avoid all these hassles. You should make this story public and write a formal complaint to the lady that heads the Pune Police and to the press as well, asking for a formal apology from the cops involved.

This is the usual problem in India with a largely uneducated and/or uncouth police force and it is the lowest common denominator effect at work. Because of this effect, there is a big gap between the top and what they claim and the cop on the street. But it also does not mean we should take it lying down.

I think the new MV act is trying to address this problem, people helping victims reach hospital will be spared from legal tangles like visting courts etc. However, as you rightly pointed out, fear of legal entanglement is not the real reason. The real reason is voyeurism, the same trait behind eavesdropping on neighbors' fighting, the act of taking pleasure in someone else's trouble and using it as a tool for grabbing attention later - "you will not believe what I saw today...". There was a fwded whatsapp video showing a young woman committing suicide in front of a train, and the video was shot 10 feet away from her. I wonder how people who do this, sleep at night. Humanity is dying a painful death inch by inch, while humans are increasing in number. Ancient Rome where fighting to death was a spectator sport, was more humane.