New is always nice. New clothes, new accessories, new gadgets and everything other that is new is nice. The value of anything is known only twice in time, before having it and after loosing it. Life is no more new, we gained life many years ago, we now do not care about it anymore. A near death experience will remind the value of life sometimes and soon after we again forget it. Specially the young blood, they have that energy stored in them since the childhood that one day soon that will burst out for revolution. We all did that, we may not remember but we all did something before stepped into our adulthood.
We value things before having it, we keep thinking about it until we have it. We wish, we pray, we beg to have something we do not have. Once we have it, the value of the thing drop like some rock pulled down by the gravity. The value rises higher once again for the same thing, when we loss the thing, or someone take it from us. Simply there are three stage,
- wishing to acquire the thing,
- acquire the thing and
- regret after losing the thing
We have one life, we do not care we wished to acquire a life, now we acquire a life and we do not have chance to regret if we loss the life. I wanted to relate the topic to the life in a highway. Many accidents happened, many people died, many people are in such a condition that they are just breathing in and breathing out.
The newly constructed six-lane highway (Kathmandu-Bhaktapur part of Araniko Highway) is approximately 9.1 km and since its construction more than hundred had lost their lives. Some while crossing the street while some on their own vehicle. Many lost their lives and they are totally innocent, kids who even couldn't speak, old people, only son or daughter of the family, newly married couples, working man of the family and so on. The reason they lost their lives is because of carelessness of the drivers and their over-confidence. The part of the highway is so wide, it is first in Nepal: an International standard highway construction, and the death rate also increased in international standard.
I do not understand why people ride so fast? 80-90-100 kmph? Until I myself rode for the first time. I was like going smooth, not too fast. Wait, when I got my eyes on the speedometer, it was pointing on 80 kmph. I was like "Are you kidding me??!!... I was not even ... Did I just overtake that bike?!...". Before I ride I was thinking I would not exceed my speed over 50, but the wide highway will eventually speed you up. May be other drivers have the same experience, and accident happen when your vehicle turns out of control. Its hard to control while you are over-speeding. It's hard to judge a thing on the road when you are over-speeding, because you get close to the thing so quickly.
I've noticed the difference while crossing the road before and after the construction of the six-lane highway. It's hard to guess the speed of the vehicle approaching towards you and when they get close to you, they are close to you in no-time. I keep waiting for an break to cross the road, many do not. People are in such a hurry that they do not even look and rush towards the other end. I couldn't understand how many times they are lucky to skip the accident. Many-a-time the driver loses the control while saving the pedestrian.
The stat of the accident is so high, in the six-lane highway, that Government of Nepal have appointed special task force of armed police to keep the highway safe. You will see like this in Nepal only. Seriously?! Special Task Force for highway safety in a city?!
Anyways, being a human we have at least that much of sense (I mean the common sense) to keep ourselves safe. We all know what to do and what not to do, but we still do what is not supposed to be done. It is our human nature, but still... If we even try little from our side, we can reduce a lot of accidents. Forget and ignore what other do, just know what is right and do it.
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| Six-Lane Highway (Suryavinayak) photo: razendra |
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