Thursday, July 26, 2007

For the God's sake stop dancing!!

Woooha.....hold your horses guys, I am not an "anti-dance guy" or something, what I am referring over here is the feats people do when crossing the roads.

"For the God's sake stop dancing" is the feeling I get when I am riding my bike on the road and people who are tying to cross the road shuffle from their positions front and back confused. I feel most of the people in Hyderabad are not good at crossing the roads. I see educated and well dressed people running and performing other feats while crossing the roads.

One point I do not understand that, we all learn "Not to run while crossing the road" in first standard at school and still I see most of the adults running. When we are running while crossing the road and suddenly see that a vehicle and think that it will run you over if you do not stop running and stop running in the middle of the road, your sudden halt can be in front of another fast moving vehicle......ha ha ha...confusing? read the para again you will get it!

At that point there might be three incidents(in fact accidents) that can happen:

  1. You are running and your vision will be focused on the vehicles which are about to cross you in front and some times we miss the vehicles coming exactly perpendicular to us. So when we stop suddenly the vehicle coming perpendicularly might hit you and the incident might turn into an accident.
  2. You are running and you suddenly stop, the vehicle coming perpendicularly brakes hard and stops without hitting you. So far so good, but the vehicle behind that vehicle does not know that the vehicle in front will stop suddenly and the incident can turn into an accident.
  3. When you stop suddenly in the middle of the road the vehicle coming perpendicular to you might not brake hard but break enough to allow you to take a step further. This is my favourite part...you think the vehicle will pass and and move back, at the same time the driver thinks that you will pass and he also moves in the same direction. And again when you move forward he will also turn in your direction. This shuffling will happen till the you are right in front of the vehicle and both of you are stand still.

Truly speaking, its not the fault of the pedestrians always, the drivers also take their share equally. When driving I see that most of the people are rushing and trying to shove their vehicles into every little place they get. One thing most of us forget is that there are people walking and crossing the roads and we should consider them also.

When the pedestrian is confused and dancing back and forth do not confuse the poor pedestrian further by moving the vehicle accordingly. Just keep braking and drive straight.

So, to all the people out there, lets get back to our first standard basics "Please do not run while crossing the road". Look for the traffic, judge the vehicles and cross the road slowly".

There is nothing we gonna miss which is more precious than out life!

2 comments:

Naveenkanth JR said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Naveenkanth JR said...

Well said.

There are few problems that I will have to mention

1. Not enough pedestrian crossings.

2. People not using the pedestrian crossings available( if any!)


I would say there has to be proper planning from the admin guys to spot the most important points where people would cross the roads and make provisions for pedestrian crossings. Lets say if we have to cross the road at Anand theatre or Ashok Bhupal chambers. Do we have any option other than running to just cross the road. I don't think I would be able to cross the road at peak hours at these points by walking. People driving vehicles should recognize that the pedestrians have equal right on the road as the vehicle guys. Should just slowdown when you see someone crossing the road at pedestrian crossings( which I don't think anyone does these days).

Second thing is that people are always in hurry these days and are not willing to spend few extra calories/minutes to walk down to the nearest pedestrian crossing to cross the road.

-JR