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A senior West Bengal Police official along with her driver and security guard was killed when the official vehicle they were travelling in rammed a stationary truck loaded with sand on the National Highway-2 on Friday morning.

Yet another sad accident on Durgapur Expressway involving a sand truck. A senior lady police inspector along with her body guard and driver was killed on the spot.

These sand trucks are driven in a unruly way by bad inexperienced drivers and 100% of the fleets are ill maintained. There has been more than 100's of accidents occurring over the years due to these sand trucks.
Though the article says, the truck was stranded by the side of the road due to a puncture and the Scorpio driver lost control or dozed off before hitting the truck.
Local news papers report, that the driver of the Scorpio was a very experienced and a good driver, this was not expected from him.

What the media is not saying anywhere is, the return leg on Nh2 towards Kolkata is now filled with small to big sized potholes, few are big enough to damage a car or cause an accident. Quite a few accidents took place recently, just to avoid these potholes at the last moment. This can very well be the cause over here too!

In nut shell this stretch has become a mess and the authorities do not take any action. Unruly sand trucks, road filled with pot holes, huge traffic jam at the Dankuni toll is what the regular commuters face.



Link of the article-

https://www.dnaindia.com/india/repor...cident-2842477

Must be the huge Potholes that would have panicked the driver into a sharp left turn. The night time (lack of) visibility would have done the rest. But still the extent of damage does point to higher speeds. It reiterates the good practice of keeping speeds low in Night time on our roads. Though I used to easily touch 3 digits in day times when traffic is sparse with good clear visibility of terrain, I am super scared to cross 70kmph at night and even that only when the line of sight is absolutely clear both sides. On our lawless roads with clueless morons at the wheels the least we can do for ourselves is to cut down speed and give enough time to save our skins. Apart from innumerable pothole situations twice I have even faced a (real lunatic) jaywalker and stray cattle running into my path at night and both times my speed was well within the error margins to safely take sudden evasive action.

As per the below report, 24 year old girl passed away.

https://www.daijiworld.com/news/news...?newsID=750042

While it is acceptable to bash Maruti quality and call them tin cans in the appropriate thread(s), I do not see why we need to analyse this particular accident as a fault that MSIL has committed.

Cars hit poles and trees, and bend this badly - that is pretty common everywhere, and for most cars!


Source

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUBsplHMBMA

From the pics, the right rear portion of the Nexon has a huge shunt. This is definitely the front left portion of the Bolero pickup hitting the Nexon from behind.

Also the Front left wheel of the truck has completely receded inwards while the Nexon has impacted the truck right in the middle at an angle like it was attempting to avoid colliding into the truck.

From the pics, it is most likely not the truck driver's fault although the final resting position of the truck on the extreme side of the opposite lane may be giving that impression the truck was at fault.
Also it looks like a loaded truck and must have been going relatively slow. Its possible that the truck was not sticking to its lane though.

What could have possibly happened is:
1. The Bolero was trailing the Nexon very close without much gap and when the Nexon collided with truck, the Bolero pickup hit the rear of the Nexon and then hit the left wheel of the truck dislodging it.
2. With the front left wheel of the truck dislodged, the truck veered to the right continuing with its momentum and dragging the collided Nexon along with it to the right of the road.

or more possibly:

1. It was an overtaking manoeuvre gone wrong for the Nexon. The Nexon overtook the Bolero pickup while there was not enough gap between it and the approaching truck and ended up colliding with it.
The Bolero which was behind rammed into the Nexon's back right and then hit the truck's front left wheel.
2. After the collision with the Nexon, the truck with its huge momentum and dislodged front left wheel veered to the right and dragged the crushed Nexon along with it to the right of the road.

+1
That it was a maruti only exaggerated the extent of bending.
Any hit against something that is multiple times the mass and is relatively 'immovable' (pole/tree , tree is more immovable) but with tiny surface area => disaster for the car which is careening into it at speed. The sliver of the area that comes into contact (the car stands the best chance if this sliver is exactly the B pillar for a side-on crash) with the immovable thin massive obstacle, will come to a standstill, but the rest of the car hasn't hit anything and is free to carry on its momentum => the bending is brought about by the weight and speed of the car itself and the structure 'stretches' on impact - instead of a hard struck football stretching the goalnet, this is inverse, the stationary ball stretches an onrushing net.
It doesn't matter what car, unless there are two cross-linked iron girders like those on a truck chassis (even those, I am not sure how much they will resist bending) , something like a unibody/monocoque car stands no chance, irrespective of whether its an 800 or an Sclass. The car's own momentum is used by the tree/pole to bend the car.

A car slamming hard against a pole is like a finger slamming hard against a sharp knife. Everybody knows what will happen, and they don't blame the flesh.

We have seen a Volvo smashed, a crashed 5 star rated Nexon, a Swift bent by a pole, an American cop car that got bent by a pole and a recap of a Honda City getting bent by a pole (I remember that old accident now).

Great thoughts here from a lot of wise folks.

"What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?"

This is an age-old question that philosophers of yore have tried to dissect. And it appears that many of our fellow people have sadly been (fatally) dissected in their quest to explore this question as well.

This question is a great equalizer. A Volvo, a Nexon and a Maruti are all reduced to the same heap if they present themselves as an unstoppable force. My respect for my humble beater A Star just grew a lot.

https://youtu.be/xVh2HctTWAU

We've seen this kind of accidents quite often in this thread. A vehicle turning without a proper mirror and shoulder check with another vehicle that is going at a higher speed than expected crashing into it.
Autorickshaws, by default, have very poor rear viewing ability - shape of vehicle, position of mirrors and closed backsides.
This autorickshaw driver starts off doing the right things - has his turn indicator on, pauses to allow a few vehicles to go past, but probably has not done enough of a check to notice the bike approaching him at a speed that is significantly more than that of the other vehicles.
The bike is not able to stop and the crash occurs.
The autorickshaw driver gets ejected out of the vehicle.
Both motorists are carried in an unsafe manner as is common.

The fault lies entirely with the autorickshaw driver. He cannot conveniently decide to make that turn just because he has the indicator flashing and because he had waited for 5 seconds. The motorcycle rider had the right of way. It is the duty of the autorickshaw driver to ensure that there is no oncoming traffic in both directions before attempting that turn. Flashing the indicator doesn't give him the right to barge onto the road. I'm happy the Innova was not hit.

Looks very nasty...Hope the bike rider is safe. The Autorickshaw driver has 95% of the blame...just putting on the indicators do not entail him to make a U turn on a 2 way highway. Even if the bike was coming a tad slower it would still have been very difficult to slow down fully at that short distance. Just a reminder of the fragility of life for a 2 wheel rider thanks to such morons. I have had close shaves with Auto drivers merging into highway from a small street/road even if there is a blind corner(ex trees). They just drive as if they are the only vehicles supposed to be there

To be fair, this auto driver did seem to be patient and waited quite a bit. It's hard to estimate the speed of the bike but there is a point when he's simply too fast and shares part of the blame for the crash.

What was that white paper like thing on the windshield of the auto rickshaw right from the beginning frame? Can see it clearly.

As always with almost every accident, there is more than one guilty party.

Classic mistake of the auto driver- NOT confirming if it is all clear :Frustrati.

Biker- Not enough alertness. Expect the unexpected.

Does not matter who gets how much percentage of the blame. Suffering is equally shared.

While the auto driver could have waited more, but bike rider is also responsible to some extent. Relative speed of the bike was much higher than other vehicles. On Indian roads defensive driving is very important as we would see lot of surprises. Auto did hold up well without toppling.