Doesn't matter what you drive but how you drive

This video made me very upset this morning. I mean we know all the bad things of life but sometime just forget. When the same thing is in front of us, we get shocked. This video is so sad but still don't know how many people would learn from it. I mean rash-driving, drink&drive, drive without wearing seat belts are so common nowadays, seems like breaking the rules itself has become a rule. People don't understand that even though these are rules but still they are for our own safety. In fact I would say, these safety measures have become rules because of a huge number of irresponsible, careless and stupid people who become the cause of death to others.



And I would say the punishment should be far stricter and harder that what it is right now. Because whatever that person did is irreversible and irrecoverable. You can't bring that baby back who was an angel to her parents nor you could heal the pain of her parents. But the trick is unless you feel the same pain, you won't learn and will do the same mistakes again - rash-driving, drink&drive etc. So it should be responsibility of the authority that you feel the same pain, realize what a big blunder you have done, learn from that and ensure that it won't happen again. Because if you were driving and survived after the accident caused by you and the other person is dead - one thing you must remember, you have take a life which by no means your job. It could have been YOU but God has given you another chance. So respect that decision. Also I notice that, nowadays people are too lazy to go to give a driving exam to get a license and bribe people to get a driving license. Not sure how many of them would realize what is responsible driving. Hats off to the corruptions which puts spices on this fire. But at the end of all these shortcuts you avail to drive on the road, you miss the vital point, you yourself are putting your life into danger. So my humble request to all the drivers and aspiring drivers, PLEASE think about it twice. Because it doesn't matter what you drive but how you drive.

Reverse Bungee Jumping Accident at Banerghatta Road, Bangalore - A Lesson I Learned

I like adventure sports. Whenever I get time, I try to go out for various adventurous activities - trekking, moon light mountain biking, night trekking & rock climbing, parasailing blah blah... The latest addition to that list (which I want to be endless) is BUNGEE JUMPING. This is something I wanted to do for a long time and when I got the news that it is happening in Bangalore my adrenaline became high. I was thrilled, here comes the opportunity. I called up friends, mailed them. Finally found 6 more interested fellows and went for bungee jumping, yapeee. It was organized by HeadRush adventure sport organizers at paint ball arena, near Banerghatta Road. We reached there at around 11 a.m. The place was crowded by the participants. There was long queue for registration. We managed to get our registration done and were informed that our turn would be at around 4.30 p.m. When I looked around I was little worried about the arrangement. I was expecting proper cushions or air bags covering the ground below the place where bungee jumping was happening. This is how I saw it happening in any other places. Otherwise it generally happens on the top of a lake or swimming pool. But there was only a small net fixed by some bamboo sticks which hardly solves any purpose. They have another crane which was used for reverse bungee jumping. The difference between bungee and reverse bungee is in case of bungee you will be jumping from a crane or tower.

In case of reverse the participant will be thrown from ground and you go up and then come down.

To my surprise for reverse bungee there was no net at all. Also I did not see any sort of medical kits or ambulance or emergency vehicle. I was not comfortable at all seeing all these, was getting an weird feeling that something was not right. But still my thrill had taken over my worries and I was all set to do bungee. We had to spend the whole day before our turn, so went to a resort close by. There we had good fun, did swimming, played TT, Badminton, carom etc and had a good lunch and then we went back to the place. When we reached there we heard that the bungee jumping had been cancelled. A severe accident happened just before we reached there. One fellow was doing the reverse bungee and his strap and hooks in the jacket got broken while he was coming down and he fall fat on the ground from a height of around 80 - 100 feet. The poor fellow was from Chennai. Sadly there was no help came from the organizers as they did not even have any equipment to handle such an emergency situation. Later few participants helped him and brought him to nearby hospital. Later at night I heard the news that he was no more. May his soul rest in peace. The sad part was when we asked the organizers why it was cancelled, they told us that, it was because of some technical problem. We heard about this accident from the other people present there. I was so surprised that, even after such a bad thing happened because of the organizers' negligence, there was a considerable effort from them to hide the fact and pretending as if nothing happened. When we did the registration, we had to sign a form stating that I am doing all these on my own wish etc etc. Everybody signed that and put there life to the organizers' hand, trusted them. But it seems they were least bothered to take care to participants' lives. They were more busy to collect money and get the forms signed by people. I did not realize that they will go to such extreme by ignoring the safety concerns just to increase the profits. So here is my take on this, from now on whenever I will go for such event, first and the most important thing I would check is, how the organizers ensure the safety of the participants and what are measures they have taken to handle the emergency situation. This would lead to the next item in my checklist. Since in such activities you have to put your life in the hand of others (literally) and you have to trust them, I will ensure that whether they are really worth for that, are they really trustworthy? You have to draw line conciously between having fun and madness. Otherwise even the safest adventure like this (according to the statistics) could be fatal.