Travel and be safe in India: Relative positioning of yourself with others in traffic and in life

Everything is relative, true or false?

In life to be rich, you have to have poor people

for you to be happy to with a big house, you need smaller houses

for you to be smartly dressed and be noted, people around need to be less smart.

Imagine if everyone has a uniform and look alike like the many Rajinis in Enthiran, you are not going to have handsome, beauty and ugly as descriptive words, eh!

now that you are getting the gist of what this is about, let us go to the relativity

Einstein described Relativity in space and time. Imagine that every vehicle on the road are going at exactly at 80 KM or miles per hour, then you cannot find a rude driver or a slow moving vehicle with an elderly couple you are going to be cross with!.

Hence you have speeding vehicles and slow moving or static vehicles or  objects.

Now let us get to accidents on the road which is where i am getting to! where you see yourselves at faster or slower relatively and hence increase the risk of an accident.

The accidents happen when two objects collide with each other when they are in different speeds to each other. hence for one to be as safe as possible, then you need to be away from contact with another body or vehicle which is in different speed to yourselves. Suppose you are driving in a car at 100km speed, then a lorry at 60 or a BMW at 140 Km or a static lorry parked in the main road, or a dog which comes in the middle of the road are all hazards.

If you remember my blog on hazards and risks, the risk of an accident increases when you have an hazard on your way.

but wait, you cannot avoid the hazard altogether. our roads in India are full of them. it could be a dog or a bull or a parked lorry or slow moving tractor or the crazy driver who horns and drives too close to you in the Scorpio or a bus who decides to drive towards you on the wrong side of a national highway!!!!!!!!!!!

If you are following so far, you would have understood that neither going fast or slow  is safe, to reduce the risk of an accident. in other words, going slow or be static is not safe in roads. remember the polio patient of mine who was static at a traffic light in red got hit by a moving lorry. He thought it was safe to stop at red signal but relative to the lorry behind,  he did the wrong thing by being static!

Hence, keep yourselves or your vehicle in equal or near equal in speed relative to the object or the other vehicles on the road!

this is one way of saying "keep your speed according to the traffic around you or the object near you" in a complicated way! In other words if everyone is doing a speed of 60, reduce your speed to near 60 until you get out of their way or they get out of your way

Or if you are near a static object reduce your speed to near 0 Km to avoid a crash

Or if the road is clear, then hit the pedal!!!!, but make sure your Vehicles brakes and tires are in top notch! and you are sober to use them!!!!

Best Wishes

Chockalingam

Wear Helmet to protect your brain, but wear a proper helmet properly

We have a 22 year old lad fighting for his life since he has a severe head injury. He was wearing a helmet but did not do the strap and hence the helmet flew off allowing his head to be hit directly. In short he is not likely to make it and it is really upsetting to know that he was a very nice person with the whole life ahead of him.

Is it not time that the Government stops us spending so much of the money to rescue these injured patients which in lots of the situations turn out to be futile. The legislation to ensure safety measures such as helmet and seat belt have to become mandatory. The cost in using such safety measures is trivial comparing to the lakhs of rupees the 22 year old family is spending

Who else can take responsibility apart from the individual and the government.? All private organisations and corporate bodies can make it madatory for the individuals to wear helmets. one such company will not allow its employees into their campus if they are not driving in with the helmets. good.

It was indeed funny to see a family travelling in a two wheeler with the driver and the head of the family wearing a helmet and the wife and the two children not wearing any. it is indeed not possible for all the four of them to wear a helmet any way as the four should not be travelling in a single two wheeler!

What does the above situation tell you. As the breadwinner and the father of the family, my head and life is very important, but my wife and the children!!!!  mmmmmmmmmm  don't bother!!!!!!!!!!

It is time to pause and think eh!!!!!!!!!!!!

With Regards

Chockalingam

Driving without helmet in India and implications

We had a couple who were admitted in our hospital. the husband and wife both sustained head injuries. The husband was wearing a helmet but did not apply the strap of the helmet to keep in place in case of accident. He needed intensive care and surgery which saved him.

The wife did also have head injury, only the difference is that she died. Because she did not wear any helmet. She sustained severe head injuries. It was interesting to note that the pillion riding women exempted from wearing the helmet.

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-03-01/delhi/31113321_1_helmet-uniform-law-exemption

This is the gist of the article in the times of india

"‘Helmet relief in sync with Central law’
TNN Mar 1, 2012, 03.05AM IST


Tags:
wearing helmet|Motor Vehicles Act
NEW DELHI: The Delhi government on Wednesday informed the Delhi high court that it has framed rules exempting women from wearing helmet only in compliance with the central law - the Motor Vehicles Act.

Filing an affidavit in response to a PIL challenging the exemption to women, the state transport department told a bench of acting Chief Justice A K Sikri and Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw that the central law had made it optional for a woman riding pillion to wear a helmet. The bench then directed the petitioner to go through the government's affidavit and file his objections by April 25."

Please go through the above link which says that the central law makes it optional for women to or not to wear helmets.

May be the value of life for their wifes is not as much as their own in the husbands' point of view.

May be the wifes themselves have to take care of themselves.

Or just in seat belt case, the driver used to be penalised for any passengers for not wearing seat belts. May be we have to ask the law to be modified so that the driver of the two wheeler pays double fine for himself and the wife at the back

Or may be the wife should be penalised separately

Or more importantly the central law by the Indian Government needs to be reviewed. Otherwise the legal system cannot impose and the police cannot enforce helmet wearing for women at the back.

Or it is time for the womensfolk to start their own lobby

My friend when he sees a two wheeler driving crazily, he stops and tells the pillion rider of the two wheeler, " please dont go with him, he will kill you sooner or later"

Funny but true

think and start your own lobby for your friends and families' ladies and wives

Regards

Chockalingam

Portable generator risk of injury: One can lose his or her limb!

please open the above photo in a separate window to appreciate the open generator and the risk

We had a lady in her early twenties, went in to switch off a diesel generator which was powering a clinic. Her dress caught accidentally and the arm got in to the motor and she lost her limb from shoulder level!

Shocking and really upsetting even to hear this. When i was the treating surgeon to explain to the relatives that the arm which they had brought with the hope of reimplantation, it was very disturbing.

Then i went to a marriage where the common seating area had the generator running,[ the photo above] i noticed that the people simply were walking past in sarees and chudhidhar and children running about, my heart was bounding with fear

this is the generator where the blades rotating are seen outside and not covered as in modern generators. These open generators are commonly seen in India at all work places where portable generator is used.

http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/pubs/portgen.html

now go to the above web site, limb injury is not in the portable generator hazards.

It however is a never event to lose a limb when not in the line of duty in civilian life. Never Event is a term used in health care setting, but i feel that we should have the same in a domestic setting. refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Never_events


Please pass on the above incident to all your folks and i have posted the photo of the generator above which is commonly used in India. please advise of this risk to your folks and ask to take care. here the blades are seen rotating outside where as the modern generators have the blades covered or the whole machine covered

We had a lady who was going with the Idol in Srirangam temple around the Praharam in a cart, got her saree caught in the generator which was powering the lights. She too lost her limb and remember this was a mother of a two year old and lost her right upper limb completely. This is entirely preventable. please Campaign for No More Open Generator wherever you see and live

Regards

Chockalingam

Only half of Tamil Nadu Population have access to Toilets! news from Times of India.

If you have followed my blog published in june 2011 , i had highlighted the issue of sanitation or the lack of it in Trichy. I had posted a photo of central Bus Stand in Trichy where animals and men are scrounging for something from the area where things and eatables are dumped.

There is an article from the Times of India today on the issue of the title of this blog.

Fifty percent of us living in India without access to public toilet.

Worrying?

Now go back to the circle of life as depicted in The Lion King a Children's movie. Are we really in the circle of life in India with us thinking that we are the Kings of the civilised life, but in reality the bugs have always been the king of the Real World.

Remember the Bugs and insects have been living in the world long before the human being and hence will outlive us. But that does not mean that we have to facilitate our demise by providing a poor sanitation where we live.

If you really want to fight for it, please campaign for public toilets which are free for the public to use who do not have access to one in rural areas to prevent contamination of sewage with our daily consumption meaning food.

This way we can certainly stop some communicable diseases, but that does not mean that we are going to outlive the bugs!

Warm Regards

Chockalingam

Sky, Wind, Water ,Earth,and Sun.Are they Really Gods?. The trekking trip which teaches Spiritualism.

Man controls most things on the planet. Yes. He can tame an elephant, hunt a tiger [of course not now], Get a lion to a circus [ of course not now], put the snake into a park say the snake park in Chennai.

He does control other human beings, either as a business man, politician, sales man, a doctor and so on and so forth. He beats his fellow humans in sports and in war and even kill them.

He can build buildings as tall as he can at present and keeps beating the other like a game.He builds computers which are powerful and controls them to what they can do and what they should not [ of course for the time being]

He can fly [ of course in an aeroplane], swim and so on.

What is he cannot control something. They must be Gods.

When we did this 7km trekking up the hill near Thuraiyur to an altitude of one Km, you see the awe of the sun, wind, earth, the water and the sky and you really start wondering what i had titled this blog

Are they really Gods?

You may not want to name them Gods, but certainly something you can say that they have something which we cannot achieve or control or tame as you do for an elephant perhaps

Spritualistic, you may say. but does that not make you think. If you are not convinced, then take up a challenge to trek high[ of course you cannot do the same to the bottom of the ocean]

I will post some photos soon

With Regards

Chockalingam

Excellence is merely a habit. Accountability is the key however for this to be true.

Excellence is merely a habit. Surprised!.

suppose you need to clean the floor in the work place regularly and that is your job. Then you have the knowledge that a clean floor is beneficial to all of us and reduces problems with the health of all us. you also know which agents you use to clean and the materials you need to use to do the job well.

You have acquired the skill to clean the floor well.

the third attribute would be the right attitude. in other words if you do not feel the conscience that doing your job regularly and well is essential, then having the knowledge and the skill to do do not matter at all.

We need to add repetition of this work day and night consistently, then you are excellent. In other words doing a job once and well does not, i repeat does not denote excellence. Only if you repeat the work consistently to high standards, then excellence comes.


If one does a work consistently well everytime he does, then excellence is merely a habit, agreed!!!


But remember we need to add the responsibility that this job is our own is the key to consistency.Only when you assign responsibility to a person, one can expect consistency. However if one does not accept responsibility, then he does not take ownership.

If one does not want to take the ownership of a job or the work to be done, then it is difficult to get the consistency. In other words, if ownership is not assigned, then the responsibility is not transparent to the individual at work.

Then one cannot be made accountable for the excellence or the absence of it in that work.

Accountability has been the central theme to improvement at any work place. To be accountable, one need to do do the job well but also keep a record of this.

now how do we apply to our day to day life, you might ask

You do see that most rest rooms as they call it now a days, are cleaned regularly many times in a day and also a display is done to show that they are indeed cleaned with the name of the person who has done so with the signature. This is what is called accountability.

If a toilet cleaning is made accountable, imagine all things and works which should be made accountable!!!!

Keep in Touch

With Regards

Chockalingam