Goa's Night(driving)Mares! By Valmiki Faleiro
Time was when experienced drivers preferred night driving, esp. long distance. It was better -- and in ways, safer -- than by day. In an era when Indian cars and air-conditioning didn't coexist, night was pleasanter. Night permits sensing oncoming traffic ahead of curves (from headlamp beams), unlike day. Tyres don't heat as much as during day. Night driving today can truly be a nightmare. It can even be treacherous, hence best avoided. Incidence of drunken driving is undoubtedly higher during night. Overstretched commercial drivers dozing off at the wheel late night/early morning is becoming common. Worst of the lot is the *one-eyed jack.* While traffic police sleep and the rare night *nakabandi* overlooks, the tribe of one-eyed Jacks rules the road. Having one headlight dysfunctional is bad, having the driver's side one is disaster. A major tragedy I remember happened at the doorstep of Cuncolim, about 30 years ago. Some youths returning home on motorcycles from a night movie at Margao, mistook the single working headlight of the oncoming Karwar car for a two-wheeler. The crash left only mangled corpses. The latest was on NH-17 at Guirim, when a Ratnagiri registered truck mowed down a 34-year businessman from Mapusa, his wife and their 10-year son, Zahid. I saw a state-owned Kadamba Corporation bus zooming towards Panjim, ALL its driver-side lights out of order, days after the Guirim tragedy! If lack of essential lighting forms one end of the spectrum, all kinds of fancy spot/search lights, halogen bulbs and other dazzling accessories (which in fact are banned under the Motor Vehicle Rules 105-111) bring up the other end of Goa's ghastly nighttime rainbow. Night driving is as irritating as by day, for different reasons. Most motorists don't seem to know the basics of headlights use. That one must dip the beam for oncoming traffic, that one must not follow vehicles with full beam, that one must not flash headlights except to signal an oncoming driver to dip his beam or to indicate to the driver ahead one's intention to overtake. Our driving schools are obviously oblivious that full beam is never used on roads with street lighting. That in brightly lit metro roads, only parking lights are used. That parking lights must be left on when parking in dark or dimly lit areas. That fog lamps have no use whatsoever in largely fogless Goa. That the continuously flashing *Distress Lights* must be pushed only when in real distress, like brake failure, to caution other road users -- not when one is in some cheery mood to distress others! A Portuguese time rule had the upper one-third of headlight lenses painted black. An IPS officer not long ago had mooted the idea of getting corporates and car companies sponsor black stickers for car lenses. But my knowledgeable friend, Antonio Pinto of Benaulim, disputes its efficacy in reducing full beam dazzle. We have the farce of *Pollution-under-Control* annual certification, none such for headlights -- when most auto dealers have computerized headlight calibration facilities, seldom used! There are ways of coping. Drivers look directly INTO oncoming headlights and get themselves momentarily blinded. Ignore oncoming beams, concentrate on your side of the road, keeping a general sense of oncoming traffic movement. Never outdrive the reach of your headlight beam, upper or dipped, esp. on unfamiliar roads ... surprises may have been left behind by our 101+ road *digging specialist* agencies. On ghats, flash headlights at blind turns. If you don't have fog lamps in a fog, dip the lights -- full beam will only dazzle you! (Wish Goa was forever under nighttime fog!) Be particularly wary of cyclists: they neither have the colonial dynamo- charged headlamp (an impracticable idea today, when ramshackle cycles without expensive dynamos get lifted!) nor the inexpensive rear reflector. Why, even bullock carts are by law mandated to hang a lantern from the undercarriage. Sadly, Goa's bullock cart, like the *carreira* and *caminhao* of yore, is extinct, even if the *gadekars* took away the carts and forgot the bulls and buffaloes to patrol Goa's highways by night :-) TAILPIECE: Together with some friends, I almost became history a long time ago. We were on NH-4, past dusk, returning by car from Kolhapur to Belgaum. Aleixo Sequeira (yes, the ex-Industries Minister and current MLA), our expert, was at the wheel. On a straight stretch by a *beedi* factory just before the Nipani hill, a bullock cart came into our headlight view, proceeding in the same direction. The cart, obviously, didn't carry an undercarriage lantern. A truck was speeding from the other end. At about 80 kms/hour, Aleixo decided he had space to overtake the cart before the truck could kiss us. He shifted gears and began to overtake. Just then, we horrifyingly realized that it was not a lone cart, but an entire caravan of maybe 20, rolling in pitch dark! It was Aleixo's driving skills and the trucker's kindness to swerve that allows this story to be told. (Bullock cart caravans were notorious those days, esp. around sugar & tobacco mills of Sankeshwar, Kolhapur, Ichalkaranji, Karad -- but one seldom got them in such a ramrod straight file.) (ENDS) The Valmiki Faleiro weekly column at: http://www.goanet.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=330 ============================================================================== The above article appeared in the May 7, 2006 edition of the Herald, Goa _____________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. Goanet mailing list (Goanet@goanet.org)