Goa’s appalling road sense-1 

Valmiki Faleiro

Lack of good driving skills is one part of Goa’s problem. The other is our appalling road sense. How many licensed drivers will halt and check both sides before entering a main road? How many will avoid reversing into a main road? Or if wanting to turn, take to the left or the median, well before the intersection? And indicate in advance the intention to turn, with side blinkers or the universal hand signals any duffer behind will understand? Or that it’s not a bright idea to suddenly slow down or stop without signaling the tailing traffic and, if it can be helped, slowing or stopping only on the side shoulder and not on the carriageway?

Between poor driving skills and lack of road sense – the conjoined twins that primarily cause death and misery on Goa’s roads – the latter is far more lethal. Inept driving does cause accidents, but our woeful bliss of road sense and traffic rules is the bulk cause of road tragedy.

We shall spend some time beginning today, peering at our abysmal road sense … in a traffic world that makes increasing demands of a good and safe driver. Let us begin with the troika that traffic experts the world over regard as the biggest cause of road accidents … over-speeding, overtaking and tailgating (following the vehicle ahead too closely at unsafe speed.)

Over speeding, to my mind, goes far beyond exceeding the (often ludicrous) speed limits prescribed by Government on Goa’s roads. Did I say ludicrous? Consider an instance: a 30 kms stretch of National Highway-17, no less, between Panjim and Margao, bears about two dozen *speed limit 40* signboards. Most are entirely unwarranted … the straight and clear-sight stretch at Cortalim, below the Verna plateau, is an example. Why a speed limit on a causeway? Do the Australian Acacias (planted on roadsides when Dr. Willy was PWD Minister) distract? Perhaps the KR trains hurtling in the nearby khazan paddies inspire pumping the accelerator? Ha!

(More confounding is while all the boards notify the start of a speed limit, none announce the extent or the *end* point. What is a driver uninitiated to Goa’s peculiarities to make? That the speed limit begins at the very first board outside Panjim, or Margao, and runs all the 30-odd kilometres of the NH, the boards in between being mere reminders?)

What I am suggesting is that one should not rely on Government-notified speed limits alone but evolve a mindset on speed – based on road sense, circumstance, one’s driving ability and the condition of the vehicle. One could be well and truly be over-speeding at a mere 20 km/ph and one could still not be speeding at 120 km/ph (if you have the nerve and sanity intact to do that on Goa’s roads, that is!)

*Over speeding,* I say at the risk of sounding duff, is ANY speed at which circumstances demand driving/riding at a far lower speed. Driving at 20 km/ph on Margao’s Francisco Luis Gomes Road (“Station Rd.”) would be actually doing a butcher’s job (and at a hairpin bend on Anmod, an attempted or accomplished suicide.) Flooring the accelerator on a straight, clear-sight, high ground stretch (where no two- or four-legged creature can dart across in surprise), like on Goa-Mumbai is certainly not over-speeding!

A relatively *slow* speed may actually be too *fast* if you cannot complete an exigent maneuver, like turning or stopping, with ease. Being a subjective term and dependent on wide circumstances, the best self test on speeding would be to ask oneself, “Would I be in effective and complete control of the vehicle if a sudden contingency arose round the bend … a cattle herd squatting, a pedestrian running across, a recklessly driven vehicle coming straight at me?”

If you have the slightest doubt that you may not (be in complete control of the vehicle), then the vehicle is driving you. You ARE over-speeding! A safe speed depends on many factors … road conditions, weather conditions, light conditions, condition of the vehicle, the level of driving skill and, above all, your own road sense.

The speed bug bites everyone and everywhere, not just youngsters. Police in California, USA, arrested Roy Rawlins for speeding at 150+ km/ph on a controlled road. He was 104, not 24. Be it ours to be in control of our senses, if we hope to be in control of the wheel/handlebars we wield, “a monster of great potential destructiveness” as Buchanan, the revered traffic guru, once said.

Tailpiece: I’m quizzed that this series on road deaths in Goa evokes reaction from *outsiders* rather than Goans in Goa. Ricky Wayne, USA, presently holidaying in Goa, gave a succinct insight on our road madness (Reader Speak, HERALD, March 17, 2006.) A few responses on Goanet, an e-list of Goans worldwide, to which I post the column after publication. An interesting observation, however, came from A.P. Machado, Portugal, not a Goan but interested about Goa, who found acquaintance after googling an early piece in this column. Says Machado,

“Death toll on Goa's roads appears to be a legacy from the colonial period. In Portugal, roads kill more than flu every year. Road accidents per capita, here, are the highest in EU, second only to Greece. Plans, programs, ads, penalties, you name, are of no use. Only recession could curb the trend so far.”




Valmiki Faleiro
March 25, 2006