Road rage

On a pleasant Sunday morning, when I was conversing with a relative of mine on a road I noticed a a large poster on the wall. No, it was not the picture of a hero or heroine of a new film that attracted my eyes.

The poster was of a youth, a motorbike racer, pasted on his first death anniversary. The boy had died in an accident.

My relative told me that racing on the roads had killed many young lives. Racing and rage on the roads take lives not necessarily because of the speed alone, but due to bad road conditions and speedbreakers laid at unexpected places without any norms and reflectors installed. He told me that just at a nearby road a schoolgirl had lost balance after hitting a speedbreaker two days ago and lost her life.

The blame for loss of young lives should mainly be laid on the doors of parents and the traffic police. Parents yield to the dangerous desire of their sons to buy and drive high-speed bikes at an age in which they do not have much control over vehicles nor the patience and maturity to drive in heavy traffic conditions. Their only drive is speed and the thrill they get out of it.

The youngsters often are a victim of peer pressure. Driving on roads at top speed alongwith their friends has caught up; this leads to accidents, minor and major. If the poster that was put up by his friends showed their remebrance, there was this online tribute to the boy by a person who tried to befriend him 20 days after his death.

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A NOTE ON RAHUL K

1

I gave a friend request to rahul k twenty days after he died... his password must have burnt inside the electric crematorium.. his profile would look like this always, to the unfriended.. just like he has become, alien,and distant after his death

2.

i first met rahul k in the obituary banner outside his school by friends who think they know him well because they were with him all the time they are the ones that believe they know themselves well because they are with their own selves all the time.

3

i have never met rahul k i can never be friends with him.. noone knew him better than the median of the road his superbike hit... it met him without prejudice without the batter of his friends, without the hullabaloo of adolescence without the money of his dad and with that mercilessness , crushed the flowers of his innocence all of us had ignored when he lived..

4

then in the darkness , he remains as a profile in the facebook and a few photographs that wouldnt yellow with time.. and that is just about the only thing the internet saved for ' us' from the sands of time...

DEDICATED TO RAHUL KOSAKI AND EVERYONE ELSE HE EPITOMIZES

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The police do not book, as much as they should, the youngsters for over speeding, not wearing helmets and endangering the lives of other users on the road. This menace can be curbed if the following measures are taken. Police must implement strictly rules relating to licence for driving, helmet wearing, and speeding on roads. Heavy fines must be imposed on all offences in this regard. There is a need to save the youths from overspeeding, aggression, and abnormal behaviour in public that poses risks to others' lives.

A study note on road rage cited by a neuro psychiatrist notes there are external factors such as noise, overcrowding, and temperature that rule the emotions of an aggressive driver. So the solution lies in parental control, counselling in schools and colleges, strict imposing of traffic norms by the police and educating and creating awareness in youth about the need for valuing one's life and that of others in society.