Corollary to the earlier comment on Highways Kill: My Own Experience

Well! When I wrote that the maximum number of reported road accidents are on the highways (http://tamil-nadu.blogspot.com/2006/01/highways-kill.html) and that most of them were fatal, I didn’t expect to experience it personally so soon.

48 hours since a highway accident, I am alive and healthy and well relatively un-scathed. One of the later visitors to the site said that the police thought no one in that jeep could have survived. Me and my co-passenger did. The driver too escaped with fracture and minor injuries.

Learnings from the experience about highways and accidents in highways:
that predominant accidents in the highways happen between the hours of 2-4 a.m.
that you need to file a police complaint and get a copy of the FIR for you to claim insurance
that the going rate of bribery in the police department could vary from case to case, in our case I was told later that they demanded Rs. 750/- for the copy of the FIR
that our ordinary people are still the best help in the case of any emergency in this country. We were rushed to our destination by another passing by vehicle who almost turned 180” to accommodate us, the auto driver who had earlier turned up miraculously at a strange hour of 3 a.m. at the accident site, volunteered to take the driven (who was hurt more) to the nearby hospital and get him attended to.

It would be interesting to know and research on how many of the accidents are caused by the heavy vehicle goods carrying traffic, ours was caused by one. Directly and In-directly, these vehicles that carry goods from one end of the state to another, criss-crossing the state all the time, they may be responsible for most accidents is what I feel (and not because I am a victim). These vehicles are driven by a unique class of human beings who have to drive at crazy speeds to ensure that they transport maximum goods in minimum time between far off locations. They often live off their cabins and seemingly do not have any great employee benefits (compared to the private buses some of whose employees get honorable benefits comparable with smaller enterprises).

Now that we are constructing highways primarily to move goods from one port to another and not necessarily for the people of the state, it is time someone took a serious look at the road safety systems in place in the highways and also the level of road safety knowledge among the heavy vehicle drivers and their plight. It would be more purposeful and safe to the rest of the world than the AIDS awareness programmes that seems to be the primary education targeted at them these days.