[Thad E Ginathom]

I seem to remember being told in UK that the speed at which a collision with a pedestrian is likely to kill is as low as 30MPH. That's about 50kph. Shocking!

I can't quote a reference, and it would be nice to be wrong. Unless the right answer is even slower

My feeling about comparing speed in Britain with speed in India is that it is like buying American goods in UK: some how one always ends up with the dreadful exchange rate of 1GBP=1USD, or worse.

Subjectively, I feel like 1kph is the same as 1mph. 80kph feels fast, whereas 50mph (in UK) is a fairly ordinary speed even on an undivided road. 100kph in India feels scary: the speed limit for both motorways and unrestricted "dual carriageways" in UK is 112kph, and sticking to it can feel really burdensome!

[SmartCat]

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom

I seem to remember being told in UK that the speed at which a collision with a pedestrian is likely to kill is as low as 30MPH. That's about 50kph. I can't quote a reference, and it would be nice to be wrong. Unless the right answer is even slower

EuroNCAP pedestrian impact tests are done at 40 kmph.
https://www.euroncap.com/en/vehicle-...an-protection/

Even if one is cruising at 80 or 100 kmph, the actual impact speed could be much lower because almost everybody hits the brake hard when they see a pedestrian running across.

Other than driver's action and cruising speed, the severity of impact also depends on -

- Braking distance of car in question (Eg: BMW 3 series Vs Bolero)
- Number of passengers/luggage in the car (heavy car = longer distance to slow down or stop)

[hondaford]

Originally Posted by smartcat

Other than driver's action and cruising speed, the severity of impact also depends on -

- Braking distance of car in question (Eg: BMW 3 series Vs Bolero)
- Number of passengers/luggage in the car (heavy car = longer distance to slow down or stop)

Even if the driver is cool headed and an expert in a well oiled machine, we never know what the idiot pedestrian will do. So it becomes a game of chance. Santosh kept cool but the idiot could have decided to run and then the consequences would be different for no fault of Santosh.

Other than praying, we can increase our chances by using the laws of physics. A car at 80 kmph needs roughly 50m to stop. Without clear line of sight for 50m, we should slow down. We have to be prepared to stop because dodging is a game of chance and it is best not to depend on the pedestrian’s thinking skills - if they were so smart, they would not be running across a highway without thinking.

Regards.

[R2D2]

I am familiar with that stretch as I travel to Hubli-Dharwad since my in-laws live there. I take that road for all journeys to the coast. My thoughts:

a) The woman was crossing from the right hand side to left, from the opposite lane. That gave Santosh precious seconds to swerve and avoid a collision. Had it been the other way around i.e. crossing from left to right she would have been slap bang in the path of the car.

b) The X3s brakes are superb and I say this after having had/driven powerful BMWs (a 535i) in the UK. My Altis' brakes are very good too but don't really compare to the anchors in those cars.

c) I cruise at 120 kmph depending on the road, yes that is pretty fast, but I HATE being stuck in traffic where a variety of bikes, tractors, cars, buses and trucks bunch up and where a driver may suddenly pull out to overtake the slow moving vehicle ahead of him. In my experience (well over 3 decades of of driving) mistakes happen when traffic backs up in this manner and someone tries to overtake or brake suddenly. So I can empathise with what Santosh Bhat does/did to avoid traffic as far as possible.

d) I slow down to about 60 kmph near villages. At this speed the car's brakes are sticky enough to stop in a very short distance. It's not just people you need to be worried about but animals especially dogs and bovines. If I see a ball on the road it's always safe to assume there will be a kid coming to get it. SLOW DOWN immediately.

e) Several years back I had a near-bad experience when driving from Pune to Bangalore a kid suddenly stepped out off the median. He was hidden by the flowering plants grown there for beautification purposes and possibly to reduce glare at night. Both he and I were very luckily because he saw the car and had the good sense to stop and not run. Because I would have 100% hit him at 120 kmph and there was no way he would have survived that. After that day when on a 3 lane road, I stick to the middle lane when going around curves or bends in the road staying as far away from the median to avoid such surprises and give me much needed seconds to react and avoid an accident.

[nishsingh]

Call me weird, but I have made it a habit of watching road accident videos on Youtube and Team-BHP the evening before my road trips.
Helps me mentally prepare for the numerous things that can go wrong, and allows me to preempt and prevent any possible accidents and dangerous scenarios.

[DRIV3R]

https://youtu.be/Vs4-7kmqcPU

This happened to a friend of mine last night. Car was a Linea T Jet, location near Sankagiri.

[Added_flavor]

Caught this on the way back from Virajpet. Must have been a scary moment for the passengers in the Innova.

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

[audioholic]

Originally Posted by Added_flavor

Caught this on the way back from Virajpet. Must have been a scary moment for the passengers in the Innova.

Looks like the Innova driver was quite stupid to try to go behind the car ahead and finish the overtake. A little more time and he would have rammed into the bike coming from the opposite side. I have observed this behavior in many Innovas, mainly Yellow board cabs. They never want to give up the momentum which ends up in risky overtakes just because they dont want to slow down.

This has even happened to me in the car. The Innova would have hardly been faster by 10kmph, but they end up flashing beams, getting to the opposite side and trying to overtake you at a S-L-O-W pace. A gentle tap on my car accelerator will put them back in their lane after a few seconds of failed efforts. The really aggressive ones at this stage will come a little more than half way, and then abruptly cut into your lane. Hence, once the car has managed to reached this point, I ease off the throttle and let them ahead.

On the other hand, these new tippers by Bharat Benz are pretty capable of reaching their top speed with ease especially when unloaded. But looks like he didnt look in the mirrors to spot the Innova, or maybe there was a battle of egos

[SmartCat]

Originally Posted by Added_flavor

Caught this on the way back from Virajpet. Must have been a scary moment for the passengers in the Innova.

Originally Posted by audioholic

On the other hand, these new tippers by Bharat Benz are pretty capable of reaching their top speed with ease especially when unloaded. But looks like he didnt look in the mirrors to spot the Innova, or maybe there was a battle of egos

Trucker moved to the right for some strange reason. Perhaps the road ahead was bad and he did not notice the Innova behind.

[Acharya]

Originally Posted by smartcat

Perhaps the road ahead was bad and he did not notice the Innova behind.

The road in the video did not look bad, in fact if you see initial few seconds in video, the road is patched quite well for potholes.
Innova was of course in hurry to overtake without waiting for proper space, furthermore, it failed to honk and let truck driver know about its intention to overtake.
On an undivided highway, I always follow this precaution (i.e. honk before your initiate overtake maneuver), as truck drivers may not be aware of your presence.
At the end of the day, patience is truly a virtue on highways, unfortunately many such taxi drivers realize it too late

[Added_flavor]

Originally Posted by smartcat

Perhaps the road ahead was bad and he did not notice the Innova behind.

The road was fine and there was no two-wheeler or any other obstacle in front of the truck. He just drifted probably because he was looking at his phone or something. When we passed him, he was laughing about it.

With regards to the Innova, as somebody else mentioned, he was in a hurry to overtake so that he doesn't lose momentum and at the same time he did not want to downshift and complete the maneuver quickly. He was driving the same way even after this incident.

[sandman_30]

So this happened a couple of years back while on My Ladakh trip.

Yes, it was a near miss yet there are a couple of learning / takeaways and have taught me a lesson that I will never forget. So here goes the story.

It was First week of July 2015. I was driving my mountain goat (Swift Petrol - almost 1lac Kms) and the plan was to break the journey from Manali to Leh at Keylong / Jispa instead of the usual Sarchu / Pang. We broke our journey eventually at Jispa with a though that we will start extremely early (MISTAKE #1) the next day so as to allow us to reach Leh by nightfall.
Determined to do a cannon ball run of sorts, we started at04:00 hours fro Jispa and after crossing 2 Ugly water crossings we were climbing Baralacha La much before day break around 05:00. Much to our delight we saw well paved roads while climbing the pass and that prompted unwarranted spirited driving (MISTAKE #2). Few minutes went by and everything was going well ..almost.
Just a few kilometers shy of the top there was this beautiful horse shoe shaped curve climbing up and the Schumacher in me pushed the throttle a bit more than required in the hope of having fun that lasted for 2 seconds until suddenly when we lost complete traction as we were exiting the hairpin. Before I knew it, The car turned 90 degrees and the windscreen now faced towards the multi thousand feet drop into the valley with just a couple of feet between the front tip of the car and the edge of the road. So it is a cliffhanger, quite literally . So friends what had actually happened was that this was my first ever encounter with the dreaded BLACK ICE. There was this patch of frozen crystal like sheet of ice smooth like a glass just at the exit of the hairpin bend. Once the front tires hit the patch, there was absolutely no traction and we were 'THIS' close to meeting the almighty. But the ALMIGHTY had other plans, his plan was to only teach us a lesson and boy what a lesson it was.

Alright, going back to the story. The car was facing the drop with zero traction and the edge of the road nearing with each passing nano-second and that is when natural instinct kicked in and I turned the steering to my right and as luck would have it the front right tyre just about crossed the black ice and found traction on the tarred road. Merely few inches of rubber on tar was enough to aid the vehicle to turn in the direction of the road and in the next half a second or so (that seemed like forever) I felt the left front tyre finding traction, then the car did a fishtail maneuver by swerving to the left and then on to right one time each and voila all 4 wheels were on the road. I drove 200 metres further to ensure that the Black ICE patch was completely gone and then stopped and caught a breather, prayed to god and understood the very valuable lesson(s) that i had just learned the hard way.

1. Starting early to avoid water crossings is a good idea, but this also means the chances of hitting BLACK ICE are high especially before the sun comes out. So ALWAYS be aware and exercise utmost caution.
2. Secondly, as the BRO loves to put it "Be Gentle On My Curves"

I Hope, fellow community members will be able to read my story and maybe this might even help someone and hence the need of sharing this snippet with everyone here.

[NiInJa]

Just got a notification mail that I've subscribed to this thread, I kind of got motivated to pen down an exciting story here.

I was about to finish my standard 5 final semester exams and my dad and two uncles had planned for a road trip to a holy place in Karnataka. I dont remember if it was 1996 or 1997 (I am 30 now and on medication as I type :P ) but what I clearly remember that it was the time when the great comet (Hale-Bopp Comet) was in the sky and visible to the naked eye. Dad and my Uncles were discussing the itenarary with the driver of the Tempo Trax (Force Motor's 7 seater Gurkha of today) that we had hired for the trip. The plan was to leave Pune around 5 pm after we were back from school, head towards Solapur, cross the border and then reach the place called Ganagapur which is in Karnataka. I vaguely remember them arguing about driving throughout the night or taking a stop at Solapur and continuing the journey early morning. I remember mom pitching in and urging to halt at Solapur while the driver confidently saying that he can drive all night and reach Ganagapur by early morning. Finally, the driver won. It was decided that we have dinner at government rest house in Solapur and continue towards Karnataka in the dead of the night. I wondered why my mom sounded so concerned, 'chill mom !- it was just driving a car at night thats all' I said in my mind, also I was just too excited about the prospect of not sleeping through the night, I would finally get to see the Hale-Bopp comet in clear skies. I had taken the newspaper article with me on which it was written at what time and direction would that comet be visible in India.

It was a different time then, roads were rough and narrow with not much sign boards especially rural roads, there were no cell phones, google maps or whatsapp, everything was planned on landline phones, things like route-map were mostly based on the driver's experience with roads and whether he had taken the road earlier. In our case, the driver had not driven to Ganagapur in his entire career so far, but he claimed to have great deal of experience with night driving.

So, by six in the evening, we left Pune, three young men, their wives, and a total of four kids (eldest being in std. 7) and their grand mother stuffed in a rather spacious Trax, the first row could seat three -driver included. Women took the middle row and kids -me included- took the last row with one uncle. Luggage was mounted on the rooftop and stashed below the rear seats. As planned, we reached Solapur at night and had dinner at the rest house, my dad worked with the state goverment and he had made the arrangements. I wasnt keeping a track of the time as I wasnt having a watch, but given that I was too sleepy, I guess it must be around 11 in the night. An hour or so later, we stopped at a road-side 'tapri' to attend nature's call and have tea. It was pitch black and the sky was lit up with stars. I finally got to see the comet ! The sight was something I had not seen before, it was there, just the way it was described in newspapers ! There was no google mind you ! I had no idea how a comet looked ! By this time it had destroyed my sleep, that excitement meant I was wide awake staring at the sky through the rear window even as we started off again. I could not sleep, all others except my mom had slept. The SUV's noise along with my uncle's snoring was a bit synchronous. The terrain on the south-east side of Maharashtra is mostly flat with just a few small hillocks, so the roads are rather straight and flat surrounded by fields. As you might expect, there was absolutely no one on the small two way road except for our vehicle. The road was brilliantly lit up as the driver had connected the wires of the roof mounted extra lamps at Solapur. The trees alongside the road lit up with the head-lamps gave a feeling as if we are passing through a large tunnel. They were mostly banyan trees which look pretty spooky at night. Road widening over the years has led to massive felling of these trees and such a sight on national highways is pretty rare now-a-days.

Things were going as expected, driver was driving the vehicle without any drama, mom was awake, constantly looking at the road in front, dad sitting in the front row catnapping and I happily looking at the road and the skies checking my beloved comet while sitting in my uncle's lap who was snoring like an idling diesel engine. Then, suddenly, the road became a bit rough, there was a lot of gravel, small rocks and sand on the road. The vehicle slowed down, my dad woke up with the rumbling sound and before I could comprehend anything, the driver slammed the brakes real hard, I was surprised how my relatives managed to sleep so well even after that ! I could see the road covered with bushes and branches of plants and trees with small rocks and sand poured so as to reduce the vehicle's speed further. The road was blocked ! It was our driver's intelligence or instinct that made him stop the Trax far away from the temporary barricade.

'Close the windows, lock the doors and women get down from the windows, dont peep out, dont make a sound !' shouted the driver in hushed voice.Just the driver's window was slightly open, everybody crouched so as to not expose themselves. He put the vehicle in reverse and started backing off when I saw a set of headlamps lighting up and heading towards us from behind ! I didnt get afraid or anxious, I was just a bit confused about the whole situation. The driver saw those head-lamps approaching us from the rear. He put the Trax in forward gear and swerved left into the fields. Soon the car was bouncing like crazy, everyone was awake by now, and we were driving in the fields ploughed and dried by summer heat. The headlamps tailing us had fallen behind, but I could not make out in which direction we were heading. Once or twice, our SUV jumped off the partitions created in the fields for separating lands. There was a dust of sand behind as I looked out of the rear window, all others had sunk inside the vehicle, not a single word uttered. I dont know how, but we soon hit the road and there was a set of head lamps following us again ! This time, the driver literally put the pedal to the metal and the Trax was flying, the noise that it was making probably meant that he was redlining the engine as much as he could. The vehicle that was following us had finally disappeared in the darkness. We were not sure what road it was, the kilometer stones were marked in Telugu or Kannada, I dont know. The driver did not utter a single word and asked everyone to shut up when questioned. He drove hard and fast for the next two hours, most of us had woken up and were shaken by now and hoping that we would see some village or atleast a few houses along side the road, but no ! There was not a single soul on the road, not even a small hut along side the road, it was just a rough, straight, long, narrow road leading to nowhere ! My mom was chanting some prayers, and finally after two hours we came across a village and some people had already started preparing for the day ahead, it was around 4.15 AM, we finally stopped for a break in the village ! everyone who was awake, heaved a big sigh, but was too shaken to talk about the last two hours. We enquired about the village with the locals and came to know that were not too far from Ganagapur and it was just half an hour drive away. We reached our destination safely. My brother and my cousin slept all through the episode and werent aware what exactly had happened except for a bumpy ride in the middle of the journey. They earned my respect !

Then in the morning when we regrouped, the driver explained the events in detail. He saw the road was blocked, but if there was a construction going on, there would have been a sign of diversion but there was no such thing. The stones and rocks were deliberately put on the road so that people disembarked the vehicle to clear the road. He slammed the brakes when he saw that beyond the temporarily constructed barricade were two trucks parked side by side, blocking the entire road, this he attributed to the extra set of halogen lamps he had fitted on the roof. He immediately sensed it was a trap by dacoits and started backing off but when he saw there was another vehicle behind us suddenly out of nowhere, he took the decision to drive into the fields. Then we kept on driving in the field, far away from the road and he drove in circle, trying to find a good escape route, keeping the bearings in his mind, he hit the road again beyond the blockade. According to him, one of the trucks that had blocked the road had started tailing us, but since our speed was high it was not able to catch up. Luckily our vehicle did not suffer any mechanical damage or puncture because of the off-roading and as per our driver, some times roads are laced with nails and thorns for puncturing tyres which did not happen. He said he was so determined that he would run over anyone who attempted to stop the vehicle for the next two hours of our drive !

I was too young to understand the gravity of the whole situation then, but today it all makes sense and scares the hell out of me. It was a failed attempt to loot and possibly harm my entire family. There were young women in a vehicle on a lonely road at night with no phones or even weapons for self-defence. We were vulnerable in all ways. My cousins, uncles, aunt and parents discuss this event whenever we get together, mom and aunts narrate it especially to their new 'bahus' and mom doesnt leave a single opportunity to give a mouthful to my dad even today, saying he should have listened to me that day about halting at Solapur for the night !

Summary and lessons that I follow :
- Night driving is a strict no-no on roads other than national highways. Even Goa drives after Nipani intersection is not kept for nights !
- The Tempo Trax (Force Motors) vehicle might be old school, but it saved our lives and was mechanically sturdy. Respect earned !
- Search lights (roof mounted headlamps) can be a good thing on SUVs, specially for the adventurous ones.
- Need to keep some self defence mechanism in place while travelling in a car with women onboard. e.g pepper spray, iron rod, swiss knife etc.
- Never get out of the vehicle when caught in suspicious situations.
- When everything else fails, you need good amounts of luck to get out a difficult situation !

[AtheK]

Had this yesterday, when the lorry driver suddenly took a right to overtake a slow moving auto without an indicator or hand signal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRN8...ature=youtu.be

[swissknife]

Originally Posted by AtheK

Had this yesterday, when the lorry driver suddenly took a right to overtake a slow moving auto without an indicator or hand signal.

Did you really think there was enough room to pass that truck? The right wheels of that truck were well into the lane that you were travelling, right from the start of the clip, and gently moving to the right as well.