Representative image of man tying seat belt.
Credit: iStock Photo
On the city roads, it is considerably safer driving a four-wheeler than a two-wheeler, as the nudges are taken by the resolute vehicle rather than the hapless driver. Seat belts are especially significant for highway drives when the speed picks up on the long stretch of road. Countless losses of lives have occurred because seat belts were given the miss, as reaffirmed when a high-profile person recently lost his life due to this, and the rule subsequently got just tightened a bit. If speed control is solely the responsibility of the driver, wearing the seat belt becomes the duty of every passenger, irrespective if one is comfortable or not with it.
I remember our road trip on the Chardham route, wherein the driver was quite casual about our seat belts and had tucked the sockets out of sight. It was only upon my insistence that he made them available. I still drive a vehicle that is not smart enough to detect when seat belts are not worn.
On one of my early long trips, I had ensured that my valued passengers, my mother-in-law and sisters-in-law had fastened their seat belts in the rear seats. It was early evening when we started and night when we reached base, with the driving speed touching 100 most of the time on the four-lane road.
It was then that my septuagenarian mother-in-law gave me the jitters when she laughingly disclosed that she had removed her seat belt quite early on during the journey. I thanked my stars for reaching home without a mishap. The following incident occurred recently on a highway along the coastal line. I was behind the wheel and had noticed the seat belt around my husband, who was sitting next to me, as we started the journey. A couple of hours later, when the car was speeding away, I saw the highway patrol officer waving me down.
Immediately, I wondered if I had the documents in possession, thinking there was no other reason. But as we stopped, I was shocked to see the husband without the seat belt. The police officer asked him, “Yaake sir, rules gothilva?” (Why sir? Don’t you know the rules.) Whatever answer he expected, he never foresaw this reply from my anxious husband, who said, “Sir, I had removed my seat belt as a fly had entered the car,” and followed this with a series of explanations befuddling the cop, who looked on with an increasingly incredulous look.
Finally, enough was enough, and although my sides were splitting with suppressed mirth, I told the cop in one sentence that as a fly was bothering us, my husband had removed the seat belt to reach out for the sun blinds kept on the rear seat to help push the fly out but had forgotten to re-belt himself. The cop’s funny bone fortunately got tickled, and he said, “You’re seniors; I’ll let you off.”