Road accidents don't happen just like that . .
On January 07, 2020, I was in a cab that had just crossed Srirrangapatna and was heading for Mandya. The driver drew my attention to the speedometer and said, “Sir, I am driving close to 70 kmph. I can see a scooter catching up. It has already overtaken cars trailing us”.
I turned around and saw the scooter gaining on us. The rider was a young girl (not wearing a helmet) and the pillion rider was wearing a helmet.
The driver of my car continued, “I cannot imagine them being safe at this speed and zig-zagging to overtake. Definitely not safe riding a scooter like that”. I never rode a 2 wheeler and I took my driver’s words for granted.
I started wondering; shall I roll down the window and signal her to slow down. Or should we speed up, gain a lead, stop and wave them down? But I was worried that such an act can be the distraction to derail them!
By then they had gained on us and were abreast and quickly overtook us. I grabbed my phone and took a picture. When I digitally zoomed it, the number plate was clearly visible.
The scooter was just meters ahead of us and I requested my driver to drop our speed. I wanted to put more distance between them and us. I watched with concern as the scooter disappeared overtaking cars ahead of us!
I pulled out my laptop. I googled for the police station of Mandya. All police stations of Mandya district came up and it took me some time to locate what looked like the email-id for the region of Mandya we were in.
I started drafting an email, requesting the police to locate the owner of the scooter and send a warning to the girl. I had hardly completed the first sentence of the email when we entered the Mandya town area. That stretch of the road is always crowded and slows down the traffic.
That day the traffic had slowed more than usual. Then we saw a crowd on the road that had caused the traffic to snarl. There was space for traffic to pass in a single file. As we crossed the crowd the driver said, “Sir same scooter”.
The scooterists were lucky to have finally fallen in that stretch of the road when they would have been forced to slow down.
I could see that the girl who was driving was not hurt much. The pillion rider was flat on the road. Her helmet was off and I could see her face — an elderly lady. People were still attending to her.
We edged past that spot. I could have taken a picture but did not. I shut my laptop, abandoning the email. I hoped the girl would have learnt her lesson. Hope she has. . .
Today I was looking at emails in the ‘draft’ folder. I saw my abandoned email to the Mandya Police and the picture I took was still in ‘Gallery’ of my Redmi. I sat down to write this.
