Team-BHP - Concentration lapse while driving

Well, reading most of the posts here, it seems to be a story of near-misses mostly. I'll present what happened to me in April beginning 2007 now.

I was using a Thunderbird 350 cc those days and one fine day was heading home from office, which basically meant Mhape (Navi Mumbai) to Hiranandani Powai those days for me. Just a short while after leaving office and much before the Airoli turn, I got into a traffic jam. It was a bad one and I decided to go off-road with my Bullet. I was going easy and comfortably crossing vehicle after vehicle just when the jam eased a bit and the BEST bus next to me started moving. I was overtaking that bus from the wrong side and the driver hit me nicely with the tail of the bus.

Man, what happened next was good enough to have been a part of an action sequence inn a Hollywood flick. The bike went up in the air and me with the bike. There is a place on that stretch where there is a drop by the side of the road and a sewage line passes, which was in those days visible on both sides of the road. I was about to fall along with the bike into that abyss but at the last moment caught hold of the edge for a split second. That saved my bacon as I dropped down quite a few meters away from the Bullet. If I had not managed that hold, I would have definitely broken some bone or the other under the weight of the Thunderbird. I got up annd checked the bike. The handle was bent beyond recognition and I had to call a few guys, who helped me get the bike out . We took the bike from inside the sewage pipe tunnel and came out the other side of the road because the gradient was too steep on the side I had fallen. I then rode that bike with the completely disfigured handle till the Soniya Enfield workshop in Bhandup :)

Moral of the story: Don't ever trust a BEST bus driver and don't overtake a bus from the wrong side

Quote:

Originally Posted by amitoj (Post 1426819)

Once i was driving back to my hotel in US after visiting a cousin for dinner. Tummy was full of home cooked food and i had also taken my contacts off and was wearing glasses.
I got off the highway into a smaller road where the hotel was.
Well, i got off the highway but i didnt get off the highway speed. As i got into the center lane to turn left to cross the road, i see red and blue lights flashing in my rear view mirror!! I was in the middle of the road and i stopped thinking, so i completed the turn with the cop yelling something from his mic!! I think it was "PULL OVER! PULL OVER!".
The cop was nice enough to let me go with a warning.

Thanks to all the COPS programs i had seen, i knew i should not get out of the car to approach the cop and "keep my hands where he can see em!" I know a colleague who had gotten out of the car before the cop could reach his car and was severely scolded and nearly arrested!!

AGree with that.Here is my story.

It was a weekend in Milwaukee way back in 2003. I and my 3 other room mates had our weekend fun , 4-5 pegs of JD. Then thought of going to a disco in Water street, Milwaukee.

By mistake i entered in a one way( down towns are confusing sometimes). As expected cops light flashed and asked me to pull over. I pulled over and thought if cops comes in and ask me to open window, then he'll smell that we are drunk. So slowly open the Car and get out of my car in a way which is not aggressive. Told him i'm new to milwaukee and by mistake entered this one way. He checked DL, car papers and told me to be careful and enjoy weekend sir.

That was one lucky day.

Quote:

Originally Posted by watashi75 (Post 1602403)

The only cure for this is age

Oye. In another thread someone mentions the opposite. Apparently greyed and mature is in.

I havent yet hit 30 a few more months to go.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MileCruncher (Post 1602465)

I thought this condition worsens with age when you know you can't have some things anymore

Then its a sure sign that I am aging.

Only solution I can think of presently for this distraction is having your wife in the next seat. But I cant take her everywhere can I? Also since the kid came along she is on the rear seat so back to square one.

Had considered horse blinds but peripheral vision is largely restricted and would require too much necking. :D

PS: Hope we are not OT.

Once I was driving at some 30-35 kmph on Kolkata roads on an early morning; the roads were almost clear, and I got into a deep conversation with my uncle who was sitting at the back. I didnt realize that a jeep had suddenly stopped (without any brake light, of course) and then I felt I was about to dash into it.

My immediate reaction was to brake, and it saved my car and myself (it couldn't have done anything to the jeep anyway).

On the same morning, I found myself in a similar situation on NH-2 near Bardhaman; this time it was an Amby and I was at 90 :eek:

I realized its not my day, and took a break for tea!! stupid:

Fresh out of college, dads new esteem,NH4, Girlfriend in the front seat, recipe for a perfect disaster. Well almost

I was nearing Kolhapur from a trip to mahabaleshwar, must be around 90 kmph when i saw a good paced Tata 407,I could see its rear tyre wobbling , just when i decide to overtake it i just saw it loosing its rear tyre and the break assembly grid itself on the tarmac. :Shockked:

I guess i must have never braked so hard in my life. i was saved as i just took a sharp right turn. i must have sat in the car on the spot for ateast 10 min to calm my nerves.

Later on when there is a sizeable crowd watching in sight I am told that the driver had just repaired the tyre at a roadside tyre repair shop and had just bolted 1 bolt, the others were either not bolted or was so loose that it just fell off. and the newbie (cleaner was given a ride) did not realise till he lost it.

It taught me one thing when on road be aleart. it just takes a small laps in concentration to end it all.

Quote:

Originally Posted by EssYouWe (Post 1605015)

2. Fell asleep coming down from the Hyatt flyover. Promptly pulled to side and washed my face with some cold water. This was 3 pm in the afternoon!

This incident happened way back during my college days. I had to transport some heavy machinery to a place about 10 km away in our 1952 Willis jeep. Due to the typical kerala trade union mentality , the owners of the machinery decided to carry out the job in the night .It involved 4 or 5 trips. The first couple of trips went off very well with my brother at the wheel and me riding shot gun. At about mid night my brother handed over the wheel to me. At around 2 AM while crossing a paddy field, I started seeing the road edge marker stones rushing towards the vehicle. I immediately stopped the vehicle, got down and washed my face in a nearby stream. On returning I told my brother what happened. Then he said " why do you think I handed over the wheel to you? ". I realised that both of us had been dozing at the same area. We were very lucky that we did not go off the road.

I find chilled air blast from the A/C on the face keep is effective in remaining alert night drives.

I believe that i should share my experience too.

It was in february 2004, i watched two movies evening and night show, went to sleep at 2:30 at friends place in velachery. Got up at 4:30 am to recieve my cousin from central. He reached at 5 and we started to tambaram, camp road, where i used to stay at that time. It was a friends lancer and i took the bye-pass road through poonamalle as it was newly constructed and would be clear of traffic, while in the bye-pass i closed my eyes because of sleep for 2-3 seconds and woke up, stopped the car, washed my face and continued to home. Since then i always have chewing gum, axe oil, body spray in my car, to keep my senses awake if they doze off.

2-3 times in my indica, i have failed to take note of the left rear view mirror while taking a left turn, but luckily i have escaped from incidents except for one.

The one incident happened in march this year, just a day after i bought the car. I was doing 40 inside city and a lady in scooty had swiped her right rvm on my car's backside left door and fell, when i was taking a slight left. I did not know this and continued to proceed in a slow manner. However two guys came in a bike, both were police and asked me to stop and told that the woman is bleeding badly. I was like what woman...?. Then went to police station and while waiting for two hours, i came to know that the woman was the wife of a police inspector. I had no words, i tried to pull all the strings i could and finally since the lady did not have any injuries, they had just let me off. One thing was my back door did not have any scratches, but had a little of pink paint from the mirror of the scooty, when i rubbed it off with hands, it cleared off, tells how much the impact was, and what all drama they did for this. They told that its a head injury and they have taken her for MRI scan also.
Second thing what i overheard why they let me off without a case was that the lady didnt have a valid license, i was not sure whether this was true, but i would have pursued this angle, if there was a case against me. I would advise others too, who face any such incident to think in this angle and check their valid license.
Third thing, the inspector was a nice guy and when i offered him money, he told that he need not require money as it was fault on his wifes part and the cost of treatment was also minor.

It was really a lucky day for me to escape like that.

The biggest mistake I ever committed was partially running through a red light in an intersection of two main roads near Stuttgart, Germany.

That was the very first time I am ever driving an LHD. Me and my friend decided to hire a car to go to Karlsruhe from Nueremberg. We got an Audi A3, and we started off, he had prior driving experience in US. I had only RHD experience but I read up a lot regarding the rules and stuff before driving in Germany.

While I started driving, we came to a junction (not in city) and there were red lights for us, I didn't notice that because I kept talking to my friend and suddenly he yelled "Red lights, stop the caaaaar!" I slammed the brakes and luckily the car stopped even before passing halfway through the intersection. I took reverse immediately and waited. It scared the crap out of us. Luckily there was no heavy truck passing through the intersection to crush our car, like you see it in the movies. :D Another lucky thing was there was no Electronic Polizei at that junction. At least we didn't get a ticket at home.

My first mistake due to lack of concentration happened about 8years ago, i was driving our omni taking a U turn in city limits. My sister was sitting in the front seat, and back seats were occupied by my mother,another sister and two nieces. I was asking my niece (4yrs old) to sit down and stop leaning against my driver seat, within a split of a second i heard a scraping noise and i slammed on the brakes, i could only see a KSRTC superfast racing by the windshield.:Shockked: if i had stopped a second later then everything wound have ended in our life. Luckily none got injured.The front butterfly crash guard had scraped against the side of the bus. The bus driver didnt even stop to look what had happened.. I got away with it.

Another Mistake happened two weeks before, i was under strong medication for throat and sinus infection, my wife and daughter was also having fever and i were heading to a clinic to have the doctor see them. We had fixed an appointment and were already late, traffic in delhi is very bad these days due to the metro constuctions, the roads have been shrinked to half. This particular road is slightly uphill and bottle neck. All vehicles were trying to push past each other(survival of the fittest). and all of a sudden a honda city pulled in to my left side from behind. Inorder to save my left side view mirror i steered to my right only to hit the side of an auto. It left a 4" dent on my side the first in my new car, :FrustratiThis dent is still haunting me in my sleep and it will keep lingering on untill the next one happens.

So the moral of the story is you should avoid driving when you are under stong medication, it reduces your reflexes and you tend to do things slower .