“Ganesha on the Dashboard”

Cyrus Mistry’s tragic demise has once again brought to the fore, a daily occurrence in India – fatal road accidents! These tragedies play out every day but when the victim is of a high profile we sit upright and ruminate on how we can make Indian roads safer. Almost 17 deaths are caused every hour due to road accidents (Statista) and 70% involved, are young Indians.

I read a book a long time ago titled, “Ganesha on the Dashboard”. The book is not about preventing road accidents but developing a scientific temper. It gradually builds on many ideas and one such is that Indians unfailingly install a deity inside their car and pay obeisance but are often reluctant to put on their seat belts. It seems Lord Ganesha will save them miraculously by answering their daily prayers. Haven’t we seen unruly pillion riders on two-wheelers flouting traffic rules, not wearing a helmet, and cocking a snook at safety protocols? While these people may not have the statistics on fatal road accidents, they are certainly aware that rash driving can cause instant death. They may have lost a friend or a loved one due to this, and yet they continue to be disobedient to the stated laws on road safety.

Safety protocols are a botheration for many and I have seen this in the educated class as well. I have sat in cars as the driver merrily messaged, punctuated by titters, when cars slowed down due to traffic. It perhaps warranted that messaging was more crucial than driving without distraction. To be sure, these people I mention, were all experts in driving and the probability of an error on their part was admittedly very low. Almost non-existent you could say. But consider this – Dr Pandole who was driving that ill-fated Mercedes may have been an expert too. She was driving at a very high speed, and nobody does that on a highway unless one is extraordinarily confident about themselves. All it took was a judgmental error in a fraction of a heart-stopping second and her world would change forever. Sure, texting at traffic signals or speaking on the phone while driving at 50 km/h is not comparable to someone cruising on a treacherous highway at a speed of 130 km/h or more.

The point is that even people who are otherwise extremely cautious will occasionally let their guards fall. And then there’s another kind who do not think that misfortune will befall them. Despite the terrible consequences of many things in our lives due to certain avoidable actions, we choose to ignore them. We all do it and some more frequently than others and it’s the unfortunate ones who get caught. Some chain smokers have lived well into their eighties and many others who never puffed a ciggy have died of lung cancer. Why, oh why? I must quickly add that I am not in any way casting aspersions on Dr Pandole’s momentary judgement, and neither am I questioning her need to drive at that speed. I am in full support of speed – i.e., occasionally and on empty roads. I don’t drive but I have never failed to sense the thrill in expert drivers while cruising and throwing caution to the wind. It gives them a sense of power, even a purpose perhaps. I mean we can’t live in a bubble wrap all our lives, can we? ????

Fate over which we have no control, our fallibility and conceit are the three things that shape who we are. Think about it. The usual suspects – talent and hard work – pale in comparison. At some level in our conscious selves, we believe that misfortune will not strike us – that’s conceit. And to be fair, it doesn’t – most of the time. That’s fate. We will get away by not wearing a seatbelt or not taking other precautions in life which makes us even more careless going forward. That’s our fallibility. Perhaps it has something to do with fatalism because deep down we know whatever will be will be. It’s only when we grow older, and misfortune strikes us with greater regularity that we start to take a step back as we are jolted, and we realize that infallibility is a myth and conceit is but an expensive piece of cutlery that was sitting prettily on the centre table all along till someone tripped over to send the glass pieces flying! But who tripped? Well, that’s fate!

And this is what we need to curb – our remarkable belief in fate - and start to invest in doing the right things more often, than not. Without wanting to cause disrespect to the dead and the departed, I will still say this – Cyrus Mistry may not have been saved even if he had worn the seatbelt. But at least his loved ones may have been able to reconcile that all boxes were ticked. In scientific terms and undeniably, his survival chances would have been much higher. ???

Increasingly, humans are paying heed to safe driving. That is there. There’s been a massive change and modern-day cars come equipped with airbags – though falling short of global standards - and we need to step up with greater momentum. The Hon’ble Union Minister, Nitin Gadkari, has already proposed that high-end cars should have six of them (airbags) instead of the customary four in India. Only the export orders have six, and the Minister has raised a pertinent question – are Indian lives in any way less valuable? ???

No, they are not but first, we need to value our lives. Airbags are expensive and the mechanism is not easy to understand either so it’s not going to take some explaining before people start to insist on meeting global safety standards from automakers. Do you know of anyone who has rejected a certain brand of car because of the poor quality of the airbags? Most car buyers, mercifully, will go through their lives without ever having to use airbags so it’s going to be very difficult to explain why they should pay a hefty premium for something that they will probably never need. And they are right in a way. A substantial part of the population moves up every year to the small car segment after having spent several decades riding two-wheelers. How do you convince this lot to shell out the (massive) extra bucks so that airbags become a standardized feature in every car as per global norms? They have ridden thousands of miles with their family members as pillion, often without a helmet and braving inclement weather. They have done it for decades and now they see themselves safely ensconced within the confines of a car and we want them to fuss about airbags? How practical is that? ???

What do airbags do anyway?

Cars have mass and that’s easy to understand. They have velocity too – speed in a certain direction. When something has mass and velocity then it also has kinetic energy. Of course, this is a rather simplistic view of a life-saving mechanism, but I am going to attempt it anyway. The heavier the car and the faster it’s going, the more kinetic energy it will generate. It keeps going..going..going…and airbags or seatbelts don’t matter till such time..bang..it hits a wall!

Now that energy – kinetic energy – has to go somewhere. Even though cars crumple to absorb the impact but there’s a grievous risk to the driver and passengers. They have mass and velocity too and will keep going forward at great speed. The great scientist on whom fell a harmless apple can be called upon for an explanation. Things will keep on moving unless a counterforce stops them. That’s where seatbelts come into play. They fasten us and act as the counterforce which prevents our bodies from catapulting forward. But, our heads? They aren’t restrained at all. A severe impact can snap our heads off and that’s where airbags double up as a second layer of security.

When a car hits something at great speed it stops, and the deceleration is rapid. Far..far more than what it is when brakes are applied. The sensors detect the change in speed and if it’s rapid enough, the airbag circuit is activated. The catchword here is “rapid enough”. The airbag circuit generates heat to form gas that expands and blows the cover of the lid, and the bags balloon out to protect our heads but at the same time, these bags must deflate just as rapidly. Or else we will have the same problem – our heads will snap backwards after hitting the bags. By the time the car stops, the bags should have deflated. And you can well imagine that only a fraction of a second is permissible. I am not an engineer and I have only a rudimentary understanding of how this thing works, and I am certain that this sensor-based mechanism that has been designed to deflate kinetic energy has already reached a very high level of sophistication that I am not even aware of. Even though my explanation is risible, the complexity of it all is numbing. What if we have been driving a car for let’s say seven years and after having gone through many dents and minor brushes, will the sensors still work? Will ALL the sensors work? Will ALL the airbags come out and deflate with equal precision? We know that seatbelts aren’t meant to replace airbags or vice-versa and in the most unfortunate occurrence of a massive crash both need to work in tandem. ?

And we worry when our phones hang!

It’s NOT enough to have Lord Ganesha on our dashboards. We need his constant blessing too.