Speed thrills, but kills so why buy speed machines?

cent Lamborghini car crash at the BRT, which killed a 26-year-old only son of a builder family and paralysed an unsuspecting cyclist, was unfortunate. But one mention of the menace of speed machines on Delhi’s ill-equipped roads, and the futility of giving them into the rash hands of young ones, drew a volley of protests from the youngsters in my edit team.

All of them felt, it was useless to blame the car or the speed thrill it gives you. “Accidents happen even to non-car commuters, so why blame the Lamborghini steering in the hands of that youth,” was the argument. “It is not as if he couldn’t handle the car, what he couldn’t handle was the speed,” one young girl told me, rather righteously. “Is that not one and the same thing,” I asked, only to draw some undisguised scorn to my age-induced aversion to maniacal speed.

My point here is, when one knows that Delhi’s roads, especially the BRT, are not equipped to deal with cars touching 200 km in three seconds, why buy it for the youngsters. After all, youth is all about gay abandon and misplaced bravado, not to mention cockiness to even death.

The 25-year-old girl was relentless though. She felt mean machines like sports cars are an essentiality if one needs to maintain a certain status symbol in society. She cited a family wherein the domestic help travels in a Honda City to buy groceries. The lady of the house cannot, whatever the eventuality, use anything other than a Merc, and her husband is a proud owner of a Porche. Their children, it seems, zip around in Merc sports cars and can’t think of any other vehicle which is either smaller or slower.

So, once the lady had a flat tyre. But, she would not deign to sit in her Honda City and come home. She waited for much, much longer on the road, preferring to return only in her husband’s Porche which took some time reaching her from the other end of the city!

As I battled with incredulity, the girl insisted that a middle class me would not understand such ‘necessities’ and that’s the only point on which I agreed with her.

But coming back to the Lamborghini mishap, what was the 26-year-old doing in it in the first place? He was not just speeding recklessly but also tried to overtake a truck — without wearing a seatbelt and was doing so by jumping the channeliser in his low drawn car. If this was not courting death what was?

Of course, no one can defy destiny, but as a parent I would be the last person to give a speed gun to my ward. It may be precautionary but isn’t that what parental guidance is all about? In this boy’s case, the parents did not even know he possessed a Lamborghini!

The rash boy is, of course, dead. But who suffers? His parents must be inconsolable and will have to go through life in that abject emotional state of loss. The boy’s wife of just four months will have to pick up the threads of life all over again. It is a loss so monumental for the family that if this boy was alive, he would definitely take the rap for this.

One knows today’s upwardly mobile parents are in a race to give everything they did not get as children to their children. Little do they understand the perils of over-indulgence. Give your children values, good education and the wherewithal to make something of their lives. And all those gadgets with obscene price tags are not one of those things that will do good to them or their restless, brittle state of mind which youth in modern times bestows on them.

Of course, the young girl who looked me down as a middle-aged, over-cautious woman who has nothing better to do other than fret needlessly, will never see this point of view. Que sera sera is what her life mantra is and any such mantra has no room for either reason or after-thought.

But, not all are such. I learn that taking a cue from the recent Lamborghini death, some sports car companies have decided to educate their clients in steering such speed monsters on Indian roads and these include teaching drivers the right way to steer a sports car, especially on desi roads which are the most heavily-barriered in the world. But really, isn’t the orientation programme needed to curb the thirst of speed in people who possess such cars? Surely, Delhi is no place to touch even 100 on a lonely stretch, let alone 200 km an hour! Anyone, be it another reckless vehicle ignoring a traffic signal, or a channeliser, can kill you instantly at that speed.

Best would be to not allow speed machines to ply on city roads, but a democracy doesn’t allow such concrete measures even if they are well-meant!

According to one report, Exclusive Motors, which is the major importer of speed machines like the Lamborghini, Bentley, Merc and others, has decided that with every sports car sale, the customer will be briefed about the safety and other norms as well as repercussions. This awareness drive should ideally make the clients aware of the capabilities and the pitfalls of racing the car in seconds and how such sports cars should be driven on Delhi’s roads.

Merc has launched driving awareness lessons, reportedly at a cost of Rs 75,000! So will BMW, though they will keep it free of cost, the report said.

But what about the cost of human life which is in a Catch 22 situation? Why possess a sports car if you have to drive it below 100 km an hour at any given time? It’s a valid question, really. The valid answer to this is: Why possess one, if the road underneath your wheel is not equipped to deal with the speed you can touch?

Surely, life is more important than status in the ultimate analysis. The 25-year-old girl is still smirking at my argument, though!

Published in The Sunday Pioneer, 26 February, 2012