Team-BHP - Accidents in India

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The larger question that should be asked is your second Q - why pay so much of money for a car without safety features, the fact that all died in the car is a shock!

Check out the picture and decide yourself if you are expecting any 20L Car to survive that crash.

And too many loose parameters you have ignored.

A car is safe as long as safely driven, seat belts locked(in all seats) and having some road sense while driving over 100kmph.

I just drove back from Banglore last night. I was doing a 100 in my jetta while i saw some senseless Alto drivers doing over 100-120. I felt 100 was comfortable for any emergency in my Jetta.

Knowing the limits of a car is very important. Any car over 100kmph is a moving mass of destruction if it hits something as solid as a truck. May be an armoured truck would survive or a Formula 1 car would. But they cost in the upwards of 20L for sure :)

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Originally Posted by hvkumar (Post 2538036)

A car travelling at 100 kmph on a under-construction 2-laned road deserves no sympathy, even assuming a truck was parked by the side of the road.

The larger question that should be asked is your second Q - why pay so much of money for a car without safety features, the fact that all died in the car is a shock!

Spot on. One feels sympathy for the dead of course but those speeds on that stretch of road is rather inexcusable. Possibly everyone in the vehicle was asleep when the crash happened and mercifully died in their sleep.

I have a bone to pick with whoever wrote that article. Everyone from NHAI to the state government is blamed in that piece except the one driving so obviously recklessly. When you drive, you assume responsibility for your own and your passengers' safety.

One cannot blame NHAI and Govt and staionary truckers for a taxi driver who dozes off behind the wheel. Those who hire taxis do not bother to check the condition of the vehicle, its tyres and assess whether the driver is capable of driving such vehicles on highways. They often turn a blind ye when they see taxi drivers executing tight overtaking manouevres and of course there is no way of knowing of the driver has had inadequate sleep at the time of hiring the car but you must caution/ stop him when you realise he is not able to remain awake.

The unfortunate thing is that police have to pin the blame on someone and it is invariably the hapless truck driver or owner who is arrested for rash and negligent driving, the cops have more respect for a dead taxi driver who caused the mishap than a hapless person who was not responsible for the accident!

Yes, I agree no safety features can save anyone in such an accident, yet I am shocked at the state of the car which has totally collapsed into a fistful of metal, I would have expected the car to come out better even though it was a 100 kmph crash!

I was referring to the Pioneer piece. The Telegraph article linked by mitrajdeep attributes it to driver fatigue and seems to be a much more accurate account of events as they unfolded.

They left home at 2.40 AM with a driver who had been on the road for 24 hours! :eek: Sorry to say, but this was an accident waiting to happen. How on earth did they expect to cover 500 km with the driver in that condition? This is a distance that one is hard pressed to cover even in peak condition and adequately rested.

There is little point in assigning blame after the fact, so my request to T-BHPians is: start at a reasonable hour; ensure the driver is well-rested; take turns staying awake and ensuring the driver is awake; stop for breaks regularly; and always remember that staying alive and safe is FAR more important than reaching your distance in a hurry- do plan in advance to avoid tearing around at breakneck speeds in a desperate bid to "get there".

hvk- that pic is indeed horrendous. Some investigation into whether the safety features failed and why is certainly called for!

Not sure if this makes any sense, but I always followed a rule that if I wanted to be on the front passenger seat, I would not doze off. Perhaps to ensure that the driver is alert but also to avoid a situation where the dozing off gets contagious.

Totally agree with noop here. Unfortunately a lot of cabbies are forcibly overworked. After a couple of instances where I met these people at Mumbai airport (for the ride back to Pune) I have given up taking cabs to Mumbai. Now its either driving down or flights from other airports.

Its a good rule to follow and something i try and do as well. In fact i have been asked to move to back seats in buses where i have been sitting right abreast of the driver ( the conductors seat owing to crunch) and dozing off at night , but only between buses plying between Himachal and Delhi , no experience with other routes.

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Originally Posted by selfdrive (Post 2538323)

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Originally Posted by selfdrive (Post 2538323)

This was one of the big lessons given by my dad on long distance driving. Whenever he travels with me for 600+ kms. He parks himself in the co-drivers seat and keeps me involved in some talk, not too much to distract me from te driving at hand.

Reminds me of a situation when we once arrived home from Bangalore and he found my wife fast asleep in the co-driver seat. The whole day my wife had to listen to him on why not to sleep when in the co-drivers seat.

Now my wife just goes to the rear seat and sleeps off :D

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Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom (Post 2535704)

It might be better if he doesn't! Sorry for lack of sympathy, but it looks as if, for once, fate has helped to keep an incompetent driver off the road!

Wishful thinking!!!

The guy most probably would blame the car for being jinxed and would get behind another set of wheels!! If he were to learn, he would have long ago!!

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Originally Posted by h14 (Post 2538381)

Both driver and passenger escaped with minor scratches.

Since I drive the Bolero. And looking at that damage I am surprised it was minor scratches only. That pic looks like the Bolero took the impact well. Now this vehicle does not have any impact absorbing zones.

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Originally Posted by mitrajdeep (Post 2538093)

It is really sad. the driver was apparently overworked and fell asleep at the wheel.

Article in The Telegraph Calcutta Festival curse strikes ride with sleep-deprived driver

The car in the link looks mangled beyond recognition, very difficult for even the safest of cars to survive such a crash. Its a good point to keep checking on the driver if one hires a cab for long distance night time commute. Happened once when we had hired a cab to take us from Bangalore to Kerala, one of us would always sit next to him and watch him/talk to him. He did manage to doze off a couple of times :D and thats when we decided to pull over at a gas station and let him sleep for a couple of hours before we continued our journey.

As the saying goes, better to reach late than reach never...

Exactly gurudutt,

reminds me of the time in 2007 when we 3 friends hired an Indica to go to Goa from Bombay.
The driver did not know the route and neither did we. We started from Bombay around 2 p.m and reached Goa around 5 a.m. The whole time the poor driver was driving, while we were dosing off.
When we reached Goa, the driver's employer calls him and tells him to return immediately for another assignment. We took it upon ourselves and convinced his employer about his need for sleep. We even let the driver use our room to sleep a good 7 hours before we allowed him to drive back.

@ ALL, regarding the captiva accident:
Some things keep bombarding on my mind very frequently. We have a system/rules to have a check on driving under influence to an extent. We do not have any system to have a check on lack of sleep. Lack of sleep causes a hell lot of accidents and is nothing less than dangerous driving.

The accident looks terrible. I dont think the driver was over speeding on purpose. I guess, when he dozed off he simply put all weight on the accelerator pedal and the car zoomed. Its also clear that all co-passengers were deep in sleep and couldnt avert the accident.

Cant really blame the truck driver for many reasons. We dont know if he had parked at a safe distance from the road, we dont know if he had hazards on and many more. The bigger vehicle is always to blame, thats the rule in India and poor chap is blamed whether or not its his mistake.

^^ Wonderful gesture, mitrajdeep.

Recently the official car that picked me up in Mumbai for a Pune drop on a Sunday afternoon had a driver who told me he had been waiting in Mumbai SINCE THURSDAY for a return fare. His "maalak" doesn't allow him to return empty and since he can't leave the car, he was sitting in it except for bio-breaks for the last 4 days!

I was shocked and immediately offered to drive the vehicle myself while he took some rest. He was very touched and assured me he was fine, having grabbed a good afternoon's sleep, and that he would let me know if he needed help. I sat up front with him (in a Tavera) and chatted about this and that the entire way. Also reported this to my company and asked them to put some rules in place for drivers with their authorised cab operators (this is actually an effective step since those guys depend on companies like mine for their bread and butter).

It's really shocking how we treat drivers (not to mention other paid service providers) like sub-human creatures that deserve no compassion or respect.

@funkykar- I was told by a friend in the US that if a cop deems your condition unfit to drive, even if you are not under the influence of alcohol or drugs, you may be ticketed anyway. Don't know how true this is, but makes sense to me. A tried or sick driver will certainly meet this criterion.