Dear Editor,
Your Sunday issue reported two more bikers dead: one was unlicensed, the other’s bike was unregistered. More significantly, two lives were irretrievably lost.
We began to lose them when we failed to educate them. In a letter to your newspaper (‘May the new Minister of Education be an enlightened policymaker’ SN, July 9, 2015) I listed road safety as an important survival skill for primary education. It would not be hard to teach in the city. A teacher who knows the highway code can take the class on regular ordered walks to legally safe places at a busy junction near the school. The students can learn to walk on the right side of the road, identify road signs and learn to recognise (the too numerous) instances of road misuse. In higher grades, they should be able to articulate the breach of road safety, and eventually explain why such laws are required.
Then, at least for Traffic, we will not have police commissioners complaining so much that the recruits are a mere product of the society, for we would have expended effort in designing the curricula, examination system and teacher training to contribute to the improvement. There is no need to wait for the end of the commendable initiative of the Ministry of Education to conduct a public inquiry. Some things can begin now.
I have had my share of encounters with bikers. About 12 years ago I was turning the bend near Ann’s Grove when I saw three of them racing along the strait coming in my direction. One was overtaking the other and got a nudge, probably by the handlebar of the inner rider. It sent him and his bike sliding horizontally with wheels off the ground along the road directly towards my wheels. I accelerated so that I would not run over his head. I succeeded in that, but the bike and my back wheel were destroyed. One of his fellow helmetless racers returned and we helped him up. His entire right side was burnt red with the friction, but he was a tough, thick-skinned fellow, and there seemed to be nothing else wrong, until he said to me, “You know, these bikes have to be handled so.”
Then it was that I realized the insurmountable immensity of the problem. Such CBR bikes were designed to operate at high speed with the rider at an angle, so that the wind would lift the stress off the wrist and arms. Slower speeds would add physical fatigue to that of longer journey time.
Those bikers chose their convenience and safety and presumed to do the same with my safety, time and money. By nightfall when the 3rd rider returned with two 4×4 pickups with a dozen men they promised to pay for my damage and asked me not to report the matter, for reasons more obvious to them when they saw me writing down the bike number.
I reported the matter neither to the police nor to the insurance. Assuming I could find the right police station, even if I had written out the statement to try to save the tremendous labour the usual traffic rank would have had to exert to accomplish this task, I would routinely be required to remain ‘in custody in order to assist the police in their investigations’. I see no reason for this in many cases, but all the Social Sciences and the Integrated Sciences they ever did will never assist them to make a proper assessment. I did not have a phone and was not willing to neglect my ailing father to mark time in a police station so they could claim they were doing their job. The unfriendly insurance would have been a similar waste of time, resulting most likely in a loss of my no-claim bonus. The biker never paid for the damage.
Last year the relatives of a young unlicensed biker who crashed into my car wanted me to buy a new motorcycle. The young fellow at first justified his speed by saying he had an emergency. He even begged me to take him to the place he was going before the hospital. He also said he wanted nothing to do with the police. But this time I reported it to both the police and the insurance company. The police arrested and charged me, not the biker, no doubt because I had an accessible fixed place of abode and I appeared to be a law-abiding citizen, and because the relatives of the young man were more appealing. Unsurprisingly, the traffic rank completely ignored my presentation of the evidence of considerable speeding. The physics is not difficult, but who studies that?
The insurance people seemed less hostile; but last week, just over a year later, four court dates, station time, much expense, and eventual case dismissal, I got an unsigned letter from the company ‘with a tradition of superior insurance service’ “without prejudice” summarizing the particulars of the claim, declaring their liability limit, and advising that “this accident has not been reported to our offices to date, as such we are unable to process the claim presented” (sic). With this kind of overwhelming logic and procedure they will never succeed in getting the biker to report the accident, especially since he also seems to have undergone a gender change with a “Ms” in front of his name.
I have happily resolved not to take up their invitation to contact them for any clarification; and even though he cost me much, I am glad our substandard civilization cannot find him. May God allow him to survive long enough to get enough wisdom to do better before our interior deficiencies collapse a mine on him.
I wonder why I am writing all this, while daily I witness helmetless bikers exhibiting their speed skills past traffic police and admiring youths. But what is new? Many motor vehicle drivers and pedestrians have developed their own road culture. 50 years ago it was not so.
Yours faithfully,
Alfred Bhulai
