Re: Drowsiness & Sleepy Driving: The silent killer on Indian roads I had a near miss due to sleepy driving of a moron exactly a week ago. I picked up my daughter and the two of us were going back home in our Zest XMA and we took the ORR at the financial district. In a few minutes, I would have taken the exit no.3 at Patancheru. I was driving on the extreme right lane, by the side of the divider and I was doing around 90 K. All three lanes to my left are empty and the nearest vehicles were at least a kilometer away when I checked the rear view mirror just a minute before. I wanted to change lanes to the left in order to take the exit. I was just checking my left ORVM in preparation for the lane change. Suddenly, out of the blue, a moron in a wagon R had caught up with me in my lane. Instead of overtaking me from any of the three lanes on my left, he just rear ended me!
No horn, no nothing; just a sudden double impact to my rear. I never saw him coming. I was focused on the left lanes. You don't expect somebody to rear end you when you are cruising on 90 K. On impact, I instinctively hit the brakes (this may be a mistake) and this caused a second impact within a fraction of a second. The second impact caused the rear wheels to go out of line and my car violently swerved left and nearly went into a spin. Both wheels on the right were actually airborne for a couple of seconds and the car almost rolled over. I don't know how I got the control back. I and my daughter were extremely fortunate on three counts:
1. The car didn't hit the divider.
2. There was no vehicle on any of the other three lanes.
3. The car didn't roll over
The moron was speeding away and I gave chase. He exited at Patancheru and sped on through the toll booth towards Muthangi without paying toll. (The barricades at these toll booths on ORR are always open.) I always keep the change ready for the toll, so I just threw the toll into the booth and continued following him. I caught up with him and blocked him, but he got off the road, got ahead of me, and continued speeding. I chased him again and this time I blocked him near the Muthangi petrol pump. He drove into the petrol pump in a bid to escape me, but this time he was totally blocked by other vehicles in the pump.
I got down and pulled him out of the car. This moron was driving with his aged parents on board and he pulled all these stunts. I demanded for his driving license, I literally had to pull it out of his purse. I then asked him to follow me to Patancheru Police station.
I narrated the incident to the Station officer there. When he was asked for explanation, this moron admitted that he dozed off at the wheel.
To err is human and it can happen to anyone. But what rankled me is the fact that he didn't bother to stop and tried to escape. If our car had rolled over, he would have left us for dead.
The moron is a student, hence the Station officer asked me not to register a case, since this might disrupt his academic calendar. There was no major damage to my car; just a misaligned bumper. So I agreed not to file a case.
The station officer made him do 50 sit ups in front of me and my daughter and his parents. He was struggling after 30, but the Station officer did not relent. Some of his friends and relatives arrived at the station when he was doing the sit ups. They tried talking to the officer, but he did not listen to them. He made sure that the sit ups are completed. He said he cannot let the moron go scot free after causing what could be a fatal accident and not stopping to own up responsibility. My respect for Hyderabad police has increased manifold. |