[selfdrive]

Originally Posted by ninjatalli

Generally it's a mix of a few reasons
1. Ignorance of the problem (it always happens with them, not us)
2. Lack of understanding of the gravity of the situation (Rules are being enforced/followed, airbags, ABS & other safety features will do the job, no)
3. Over-confidence / Missplaced trust (My son/daughter is an excellent driver)

I would like to add point 4. Parents feel that their child would be safer in a 4 wheeler as compared to a 2 wheeler (what with all the fatal accidents reported everyday with bikers). With teensterones working their way, added overconfidence and egging on/ challenging by so called friends is a potent and dangerous mix. This would end up with someone clearly incapable of managing the vehicle pushing it beyond the limit where they have no idea what to do. Exactly like you mentioned in your experience below.

Originally Posted by ninjatalli

I have a similar situation nearly 18 years back...
Of course I was banned from using any car for as long as I remember; and that was the last time I had contact with that friend of mine.

Wow, that is some nutcase. Minimum one of which we have all met during our days in college. Maybe back then, people were patient enough to listen and understand the situation. If the same happens today, there is every chance of vigilante justice being handed immediately by wannabe Singhams.

Originally Posted by paragsachania

Another website has an embedded video with CCTV footage that clearly shows how fast the car approached an intersection/fork and collided with the bus

The CCTV footage shows the car coming in straight from the intersection almost like a guided missile. It seems like the driver just did not take the turn and went on straight into oncoming traffic.
A couple of seconds sooner and it would have hit the smaller vehicle in front of the bus, causing more casualties. Something similar to the accident a few days ago at Karla/ Lonavla; mentioned earlier in this thread.

It is high time that strong barricades should be installed to demarcate lanes all over. On most roads, we do not even have dividers

[silversteed]

Originally Posted by sparky@home

In a tragic incident...
...when their car rammed a tourists' bus heading to*Sabarimala....

This is the fact. The car can be seen to hit the bus which tries an evasive manoeuvre in the CCTV footage. However...

Originally Posted by paragsachania

Another website ...

Here's the link to the news portal where you can watch the CCTV footage.

the news portal says:

Their car war rammed by a bus carrying Sabarimala pilgrims at Chelamattam on the MC Road at 12:45 am...

This is totally irresponsible reporting, blaming the bus driver.

Originally Posted by audioholic

It is sad that the media carelessly reports that the bus rammed into the car when its clearly the other way round. Not sure when both the media and the people get blessed with some sense.

Common sense is not so common. Laws of physics apply to everyone and everything, regardless of region, religion, orientation, colour - that one basic rider should be known to anyone who tries to ride/drive on public roads. It's high time law enforcement authorities look at overloading of personal vehicles as well.
Maybe off topic, but unless supported by verifiable evidence, it's always a good idea to check the correctness of the stories (yes, stories, not reports) that are published by this (any) media house. This particular media house has a print edition with the largest circulation in Kerala, so one can imagine how wide a reach it has.

Originally Posted by audioholic

That Beat with seven people

Thought it was a Ritz but realised it's a Beat after Parag's post...

Originally Posted by paragsachania

At first I too thought it was Ritz but the wheel caps, rear quarter panel design,ORVM and Door open lever were give away.

Also, check out the Chevy monogram on the steering wheel:

Thanks, corrected above

[paragsachania]

Originally Posted by silversteed

It's a Ritz

At first I too thought it was Ritz but the wheel caps, rear quarter panel design,ORVM and Door open lever were give away.

Also, check out the Chevy monogram on the steering wheel:

[ObsessedByFIAT]

The car seems to have hydroplaned, giving no chance to the driver to try any evasive manuver. The car anyways was carrying a lot of speed in what seems to be a gentle curve.

Seven young souls in a car which can barley carry 5 in comfort, given its size, itself is the start of a disaster. Add to that, there must have been luggage in the car which the traveler guy must be carrying with him. So the car was already overloaded as compared to the recommended load it can carry.

Very sad to see loss of such young souls.

[Hickstead]

A priest was injured while crossing the road on Tank bund Hyderabad, yesterday.
A speeding two wheeler guy has no time to react as the priest has started running from a blind spot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnfXd-BIXkQ

[bejoy]

Originally Posted by Latheesh

Reports and interviews clearly says that it is car's mistake. But there was one line in the second report which says car was rammed by bus. I think it was a mistake by them.

Small hatchback+7 people+young people+wet road+wee hours = Recipe for disaster

+ To catch a flight + Trailing a group (seems other party already reached airport) = Chances of taking risk is higher.

Sad that they were just 10km from the Airport.

Also the location seems to be an accident spot. It was reported that a KeSRTC Scania met with an accident last week at the same location.

[KiloAlpha]

Originally Posted by Hickstead

A priest was injured while crossing the road on Tank bund Hyderabad, yesterday.
A speeding two wheeler guy has no time to react as the priest has started running from a blind spot.

Strictly speaking, it is very poor, very bad driving on the part of the motorcycle. The priest has a good case to expect the right of way from traffic because he was, very correctly, crossing the road on a zebra crossing.
If the motorcyclist was riding defensively, he would have first crossed the Zebra crossing at the same speed as the bus before proceeding to accelerate and zoom away. I am saying this because I practice this at unregulated junctions and various "crossing" points on the road.

But hey, this is India, and sensible driving/riding is widely viewed as pusillanimous.

[msdivy]

Originally Posted by KiloAlpha

Strictly speaking, it is very poor, very bad driving on the part of the motorcycle.

Its 100% fault of the motorcycle. Those men were crossing on the pedestrian crossing. The vehicles have to slow down to let the people cross the road. First man crossing must have alerted the motorcycle rider. That is poor riding and then poor anticipation.

[Soumyajit9]

Those blaming the biker should keep their "honest team-bhp member views" aside and think realistically / practicality of the situation.
There was no reason for those people to dart across the road.
An unmanned zebra crossing doesn't give a free hand to run onto oncoming vehicles.
It is a facilitation point for people to cross road when there is less or no traffic.
They could have just waited for another 5 seconds for the bus to pass.

It was a bad judgement of those 2 people to run infront of vehicles. Poor biker was in the blind spot and going parallel with the bus couldn't see those 2 idiots.

Imagine getting down from a bus and crossing the road blindly from the front of the bus. You are bound to get hit by some or the other vehicle.

I am not even interested in debating the speed you should maintain while crossing an unmanned zebra crossing. If someone has the Govt / MV Act Rulebook, please feel to share it and point to such a speed section.

Yes, City-Speed limit can be debated. You can the biker was beyond the 40 km/hr speed limit or so. His fault.

[SCORPION]

It is absolutely stupid of them to have run across like that when the bus was hurtling towards them. Let alone the bike, they wouldn't have even seen it. They should have known there could be another vehicle on the blind side of the bus. The main reason many accidents occur in India - lack of patience, selfishness in the thought that your business is the most important and the rest of the world should adjust around you.

Now I know they were crossing at a zebra crossing, but it so appears to me that they weren't waiting to cross at the median, but ran across from the other side of the road. Traffic is meant to stop for pedestrians crossing the road at pedestrian speed after they make it very obvious, well in advance that they intend to cross the road, so that you have enough time to slow down. They are not meant for running across the road like Ussain Bolt hoping the traffic would screech to a halt for you.

The biker was indeed at fault too for he appears to be riding very fast even though he knew he was approaching the zebra crossing. But he couldn't have guessed someone would run across like that with a bus hurtling down alongside him. But then this is India.

[airbus]

Originally Posted by Soumyajit9

An unmanned zebra crossing doesn't give a free hand to run onto oncoming vehicles.
It is a facilitation point for people to cross road when there is less or no traffic.

Sorry, you are wrong here. Biker was at fault for not slowing down while approaching a pedestrian crossing. Pedestrians have right of way at uncontrolled pedestrian crossings. Here is the rule



Here is a recent court judgement for a similar accident.

“As per Rule 11 of the Rules of the Road Regulations 1989, pedestrians have the right of way at uncontrolled pedestrian crossings. It is implicit in this rule that pedestrians would have the right of way on pedestrian crossing, meaning pedestrians do not have a right of way at any other place of road except pedestrian crossing. Therefore, there remains scope of a situation where an accident takes place on account of some fault or negligence on part of the pedestrian, while crossing the road from some different place than the zebra crossing,” the court said.

[Hells Bells]

Wow, I would love to see how every Bhp'ian slows down to a crawl over every unmanned zebra crossing on a busy road. I do believe sometimes we overlook how we, ourselves, are driving pragmatically (which is not by default rashly) in our urban set up whilst commenting on the forum.

I know I am scared to sometimes screech to a halt on a red light which just has 1-2 sec amber stage, especially while driving to Bangalore airport. It is far more safe to not brake abruptly and just cross the red light than stand on the brakes simply because someone can show me a driving manual for propriety.

[Yieldway17]

Originally Posted by airbus

Sorry, you are wrong here. Biker was at fault for not slowing down while approaching a pedestrian crossing. Pedestrians have right of way at uncontrolled pedestrian crossings. Here is the rule

Pedestrians have absolute right of way on zebra crossings but motorists can't be at fault if the pedestrians act suicidal. Is there a law that say the motorists have to always stop and go at all zebra crossings? Unless that's a yes, it is extremely harsh to blame the motorcyclist here.

Hypothetically, let's say a shop's door is right in front of a zebra crossing, a pedestrian dash from inside of the shop into the crossing unsighted and runs in front of your car or motorcycle. Would you be saying that you are at fault?

One fault I see the motorcyclist did was that he brakes for the first person and yet inexplicably decided to move before he saw the second person whom he hit. I would blame his defensive driving on this mistake not for the ghosts he couldn't see.

[SCORPION]

Originally Posted by airbus

Here is the rule

Agreed. Thanks for the info. But common sense and the will to preserve one's life should go hand in hand along with that.
If there had been no CCTV footage, we could have squarely blamed the biker, for lack of evidence, quoting the rule.
But here it is quite evident both the pedestrians were on a suicide mission.

[for_cars1]

Originally Posted by Yieldway17

Pedestrians have absolute right of way on zebra crossings but motorists can't be at fault if the pedestrians act suicidal.

The law stating that "Pedestrians have the right of way at zebra crossing" implies that a motorist is bound by law to stop and allow the pedestrian to cross on a zebra crossing crossing if they happen to see a pedestrian cross the road.

The expectation is for motorists to slow down while approaching a pedestrian crossing to be prepared to stop if they find someone already crossing the road.

However in this case, the biker is clearly not in a position to see the person crossing the road due to the bus obstructing his view.

The pedestrian happened to hurry and suddenly put himself in front of the biker. There is no way the bike could have stopped in an instant and prevented from hitting the pedestrian, simple laws of physics.

Its very clearly the fault of the pedestrian, having the right of way to cross does not mean that they can throw themselves in front of a vehicle at the last second and expect the vehicle to stop.

The motorists in this video don't appear to be slowing down at the crossing and they are wrong to that extent.

Even in other countries where the pedestrian crossing rule is strictly enforced, pedestrians indicate their desire to cross the road by pressing a button and cross only after the lights turn green for the pedestrians and red for the vehicles.