Educated nuisance on road

A common sight on the urban roads of developing countries

Traffic, poor transit infrastructure and bad transport management is always there to blame, an easy excuse even for mistakes made by many on road purposefully of unknowingly.  Mistakes apparently minor but putting life and assets at risk. Mistakes apparently they don’t even get panelised for. Mistakes driven by petty motives and justified by Silly excuses, creating a chain of indiscipline on road. These are not the unprivileged and uneducated masses but supposedly rich and well educated strata of the society, those who can afford car in the first place. Even if they are not driving themselves they allow certain obvious driving blunders to happen day and night by not pointing out mistakes committed by their drivers. Unfortunately these educated offenders have spend half of their life getting best of the education polishing their intellect but hardly few dedicated hours given in driving schools. Our education system focuses so much on building intellect that it doesn’t even care about something which is so vital for life, i.e. driving safe on road, not to speak of morality lessons for roads. Driving lessons should be compulsory part of education curriculum. And if parents themselves are transport illiterate how will they teach skills, logic and ethic of road to their children.  No wonder there are so many so frequent road rage incidents across the world.

A very frequent, obvious but unnoticed driving mistake that they commit here on road mostly purposefully is driving with side mirror in closed position or even without rear view / side mirrors in cars at times and it becomes more dangerous a phenomenon when clubbed with changing lanes without indicators. And apparently they don’t get panelized for such acts most of the time. Indicator example is equally true for bikers. How can they afford doing such things putting others and their own life in danger? Reasons can be many but most obvious explanation seem to be that they love their car very much especially the side mirrors and they are afraid that some passing by car will touch, hit or break the side mirror and that’s why they prefer to keep the side mirror closed and there is always an excuse for that act i.e. traffic, reduced carriageway due to encroachment, other people driving unsensibly on road and so on.

What they forget while busy negotiating the traffic jams through gridlocked roads and narrow streets while trying to protect rear view mirror of their cars that this same mirror in open position increases the virtual envelop of car and hence increases safety envelop of their car as well.  Side mirrors not only help you assess the traffic situation behind you and hence help you plan your next maneuver on road more logical and safe but it also helps increase the distance between your car and other cars passing by, hence reducing the probability of other cars coming in contact with your car body. Not to speak of ease in parking which rear view/ side mirrors provide. Was little puzzled to see that some car manufacturers even launch their lower segment models without having rear view mirror on one side posing it’s a luxury car accessory not a necessity. They need to understand the difference between luxury and necessity!! Mirrors for car have been invented for some purposes and have evolved in course of time just for your own safety, so better start using them now.

You might also like to explore some thoughts on new strategic intervention to reduce transport accident and casualties in other post here.