Forthnights

It could be me, even you....

I saw someone dead today.

It was at a junction near my college. As I passed by, there was a large gathering of people on the opposite side of the road. There were was a car parked in the middle of the road, there were people standing around. I didn’t realise what was happening until I saw it; a young man, dressed in black lying in a pool of blood, his head twisted in an awkward position, his blank, lifeless eyes staring right back at me as I passed by.

Fact:

• There are over 1.2 million people killed in road crashes around the world, and 20-50 times that number suffer from serious injuries yearly
• 3,300 deaths and over 66,000 serious injuries occur each day from road crashes

We hear about accidents everyday. We accept that there will always be accidents and deaths. Accept it so much that the death toll of road deaths hardly raises an eyebrow. We make a big deal about war casualties; of the holocaust, of the atomic bomb etc… But more have died in road accidents than the atomic bomb. Flip through any history book, and you’d get pages and pages of the atomic bomb while road deaths are nothing more than a brief statistic; hardly worth your attention.

As I entered class, I shared what I saw with my friends. To be honest, it did disturb me for the rest of the day. I couldn’t get the image out of my heads. My friends didn’t quite understand why. My friends listened with interest and surprise, but to them, it was just news. But to me, that could have easily been me. I use that road almost every other day. Just like that man, I ride a motorbike too. It scares the living daylights out of me. To die suddenly on the road, body twisted and bloodied for all who pass by to see, waiting for the ambulance to come. People look with interest, being the usual busybody. In the end, the greatest mark you leave behind in this world is a blood stained road and a number to the local road death rate.

We read about death and suffering so much in the papers these days; we have become almost insensitive towards it. Reading that someone day doesn’t raise an eyebrow as much as it used to. What does raise an eyebrow is how that person died. Just dying doesn’t merit you a mention in the papers anymore these days; you have to either be rich and famous, or you die in some spectacular freak accident that has one in a million chance of happening; and you happen to be that one.

It’s interesting how we make such an exception to road safety. Would you even board a plane if you knew there was a one in ten chance that the plane might crash? Would a fine be enough for a pilot who drinks and flies? More people have died one the road in a year than the total amount of people who ever died in a plane crash. So how come its so hard to be a pilot and so easy to drive a car? Aerial accidents are unacceptable, because we are so terrified of it and we go out of our way to reduce it. But the same does not apply back on the ground.

What does this tell us? It tells me that everything has a price to it, including our life. All planes are grounded when there is a storm or haze. How come the world doesn’t stop driving for a day so that no one dies? Because the need for it is too great. Without our transportation, we cease to function. So we readily take the risk that comes with is. Just like a pilot navigating in stormy weather, we take our chances rather than stay safe. That is why we accept road deaths as part of our society. We aren’t going to give up our cars simply because a few of us died here and there. That’s the value people truly put on their life. Ironically, we make a big deal about gun control issues, of crime rates, of terrorist attacks, but we readily throw in the dice and bet our lives on the road, for the sake of convenience. We reason that accidents happen anyway. We read the stats and say that 1 in 20 is still pretty good odds.

Worse of all, we all have this invincible impression that it wont happen to us. Maybe it’s because we read so much about other people dying that these misfortunes seem to usually happen to others. But statistics are useless. They make you think playing Russian roulette is a good idea. They make you forget that behind every number was a person with a family, with friends, with a life, with so much potential, so many dreams.

Come this Christmas, many people will be travelling, be it to church or to their home towns. It is a sad truth that accidents will continue to happen, and there will surely be casualties. So when you sit in that car, buckle up, stay alert, never rush and always be careful. Watch out for motorcyclists; you might end saving your life as well as mine.

Take care everybody.

posted by Compulsive Blogger @ 1:15 pm Comments: 0