Travelogue: Making Of A Small Accident

I met with a small accident recently, and after that my unconscious mind has run through the sequence of events to analyze what happened and hence, I thought about writing about it to get it off my conscience.

It started with me not getting good night sleep for several days. On the weekend, I had caught up with sleep, but from Monday, the routine broke off again due to office work till late evening. I had got about three hours of sleep for two consecutive days. On the fateful day, I woke up with a bad mood. I had watched a ‘viral’ road rage incident video from Badlapur/Ambarnath near Mumbai on the internet the previous evening and that morning when I logged into internet, again I happened to watch it. I was not feeling very well due to lack of proper sleep but decided to go to office. 

I left office on my bike an hour earlier than usual. When I go to office a bit late, I find less traffic on the road; but that day the traffic was also higher. While riding towards my office, I noticed a lady on scooter who overtook me once and after some time I overtook her and then at the next crossing, she overtook me again. Due to all this overtaking business, I was riding my bike at a higher speed as compared to the usual.

After a while, I reached a ‘chowk’ where about 500 meters of traffic was standing still waiting for green light. The road did not have a divider. All traffic was on the left side of the road and the right side was completely empty. I knew that if I rode overtaking the cars from the right side, I shall be on the right side of the road, and it could be risky if a bus or a big vehicle suddenly came. But since the traffic was completely still and right half of the road was completely vacant, I decided to take chance. I was at higher speed than usual in order to cross the row of cars as soon as possible. Several other bikes were moving in front of me too, although there was a gap between them. All of a sudden, from in between two standing cars, a scooter came in front of me from 90 degrees. The scooter was not visible earlier since it was going in the gap between two cars. Ideally, the guy should have stopped after reaching that point, looked to make sure no vehicle was coming from the right-hand side and then moved; but it came right in front of me. I tried to apply the brake abruptly, but I could not stop it completely and banged into the scooter. After the collision, my bike stopped. I saw that both me and the other guy were unhurt, though I had a little hurt on my knee, hand and fingers. The guy also had a pillion rider. When I realized what had happened, I got angry and shouted at the guy asking why he moved from in between two cars like that. He accused me of riding too fast, but I said the other bikes which went earlier than me were riding too fast too. One more onlooker came to support the guy on the scooter and the car before whom we were shouting made a sound, so I decided to move on.

Before that incident, my bike’s horn had stopped working but I was yet to take it to the service center. But after I met with this accident and moved on, when I pressed the horn out of habit, I found that the horn had started working fine now! It was funny to find that the horn got fine due to the accident. It kept working for that whole day which was a nice surprise and hence I thought of cancelling my planned visit to the service center. But next day when I took out the bike, the horn was back to holiday mood again.

This concludes 360 degrees review of a small bike accident. 

- Rahul