Calling all citizens: Is your confidence at the Traffic signal proving fatal ?

10:00 AM

Abhay, 22 has just graduated from college and is on his way for an interview of a sales job on his motorbike. He loves to ride. He has been fond of bikes since childhood and seeing his good performance in academics his father chose to buy him his first bike as a gift.

He is nervous thinking whether he will get the job or not. He has always been considered as one of the smartest personalities of his college and he thinks that getting this job is going to help him enhance his reputation.

He is thoroughly prepared for the interview but, as of this moment he is rushing.

The journey to the interview venue is just 8 kilometers but, it feels like 80 as he is not able to hurl the tension out of his mind.  

To calm himself down and feel better he decides to stop at a temple on his way to the venue to pray for the best. He is thinking of spending just 2 minutes in the temple and is sure that after the prayer he will surely get the job because God will be on his side.

10:30 AM

Things have not been going well with Avinash Rastogi.

He left his studies in 9^th grade to pursue uselessness and hopelessness. He found pleasure in sitting with his friends for hours and eve-teasing.

This uselessness added up over a period of time and soon due to adverse conditions his family had to struggle a lot to make ends meet.

He is 31 years old and today he has been fired from a counter job because of his misdemeanors with the customers of the store as well with his own boss. He got upset, in a fit of anger took out his uniform, threw it on the floor, and trampled it with his right foot as a token of disrespect to his workplace.

He opens the door, turns his head holding the door knob with his right hand and gives a finger salute to all the people in the store using his left hand. He slams the door shut vowing that he will never see this place again. He imagines that one day he would buy this store and his current boss would be his slave.

10:30 AM

Yash Thakur is very happy today. Today, he has got his learning license and also, he’s turned 18.

He wrote his IITs 2 days ago which went well as expected so he is hopeful and confident that he will get into one of the IITs to pursue his passion for Machines.

This feeling is driving him crazy. He feels he is on top of the world and wants to drive around the entire city.

He is currently in his favorite eatery having his regular samosa with a hot cup of tea and is planning to catch a movie with his friend at 15:00 hrs.

10:40 AM

Avinash Rastogi is driving insanely fast on the road to his home. He slows down at the red light of Magna Square and then suddenly, thinking that he is unstoppable he accelerates again, breaches the signal and penetrates the traffic flowing from the left.

He stops at the pan shop of his neighborhood, gets off his bike and sits on a rickety chair. He finds two of his friends sitting on the chairs beside him.

Avinash Rastogi has been sitting at this Pan shop since he was 15 along with those two friends. They have been wasting all the time of their prime procrastinating at this pan shop. The one thing they loved doing here is abusing the world for all the bad things happened to them.

It was the same situation today. He was totally ignorant of the mistakes he made which led his boss fire him.  He first abused his boss then each and every colleague with whom he worked with. Finally, he cursed the store where he worked and wished that one day, it gets charred to ashes.

He along with his two friends have always dreamt of winning the world but 16 years passed and there was no action on executing this dream.

Instead, he has always been a costly liability to his parents. He never spoke well, complained and blamed others for everything.

Bottom line: he was a loser!

11:00 AM

Abhay has reached the interview venue. He is sitting right now in the lobby at the 10^th floor of Sky Towers and is waiting for his turn.

Though, he faces adrenaline rush every time he sees a candidate coming out of the interview room but still he is confident that he will get the job.

He waits, waits and waits.

It is 12:00 noon now, suddenly when he hears a junior HR calling his name. He turns his head towards her, gets up to acknowledge that he is the person she is looking for. He picks up his file from the table and walks towards her.

She ushers him in the interview room. He walks towards it, halts for a second, takes a deep breath, opens the door with confidence and walks in.

11:30 AM

Yash has left the eatery. He is now thinking of stopping by at his coaching center, discuss with his teachers regarding the solutions that he has written in his IITs.

He stops at the red light at the Magna Square. He sees 72 seconds in the signal timer but that doesn’t matter, he is ecstatic today and delves into his own world of dreams.

He dreams about his life at the IIT and after IIT. He will be earning good probably the best and how his entire life will change.

He promises himself to be a good engineer and looks forward to many innovations in his career. His American dream is now on the cards.

The reverie breaks when he hears all the vehicles behind honking him to move. He starts his scooter just by pressing the switch and accelerates.

12:25 PM

The interview is finally over. Abhay comes out of the interview room and gently closes the door. He has been asked to wait outside.

He didn’t expect himself performing so well in front of a panel of 3. His interview went well. He was now waiting for the HR while shaking his left leg out of excitement.

After a few minutes, the HR who ushered him in, approaches him and tells him that he has been selected by the panel. Hearing this, he gets up, shakes hands with her and gives an ecstatic smile. 

His habit of winning everywhere has taken a new course. He has won today also.

Now, only the salary negotiation was left to which he has been told by the HR to visit the interview premises again tomorrow.

He plans to leave the venue, uses the lift to come down to the parking, gets on his bike, starts it and rushes out of the parking of the Sky Towers.

12:30 PM

Yash Thakur has reached the coaching center and is sitting with his Physics teacher discussing about the solutions he wrote in the IIT exam.  He has completed the discussions with all his faculties and is set to leave the coaching premises.

He is sure after the discussions that he is going to crack IIT. He is all set for the movie now and is thinking of picking his friend up 2 hours before the movie so that they can chill for some time in the mall.

He starts his scooter, and drives towards the Magna Square. He is in a different world altogether because of the intense pleasure which has engulfed him.

12:50 PM

Avinash Rastogi is filled with rage now even after he has taken out his entire frustration with 2 of his friends. He has cursed the entire world.

He considers his rage as passion and thinks that he needs to get somewhere. He is thinking of breaking all the barriers and considers himself as an unstoppable force at this moment. So, he starts his bike, and rushes past everyone at a thrilling speed.

1:00 PM

The traffic signal at the Magna Square is now visible to Abhay. It is green at this moment and he is around 400 metres from the green lights. He accelerates, but just a 100 metres from the line the signal turns yellow and then red. Abhay stops at the signal as he sees vehicles proceeding from the left since the traffic lights turn green for them.

He is very excited now and can’t wait to share his happiness with his father.  He is totally being impatient.

Avinash Rastogi sees the traffic moving at the Magna Square. He doesn’t want to stop at the red light therefore, he shows his driving skills to get past a car and a loading truck to catch the signal. 

But unfortunately, the light turns red the moment he is about to cross.

He has no choice but to put his brakes on because he sees a heavy flow of traffic coming from the front. It would be suicidal to breach at this point.

Yash Thakur has got one more opportunity of day dreaming. There are 75 seconds left before the traffic at his end will move as it’s the turn of the traffic from his left to flow.

Avinash Rastogi has been breaching the signal for his entire life. He is thoroughly confident that nothing will happen to him. He had all the experience of penetrating the traffic coming from the opposite direction. He was just waiting for a little gap in the traffic. His mindset was that traffic lights were too trivial to stop him from moving.

Abhay is also feeling impatience. He has done this before too and was looking for a little gap in the traffic moving from his right. He wanted to cross and move to the other end. He knew that nothing would ever happen to him.

Suddenly, he sees a gap in the traffic. He sees that a truck his way behind on the right and he can utilize this time to cross so, he accelerates and breaches the signal. Avinash Rastogi also does the same thing when he too observes a gap in the traffic flow. They both cross each other, one going straight and the other one to the right.

This incident was enough to motivate Yash Thakur and break his day-dreaming. He is ecstatic today and he also thinks at this moment that he can cross the traffic flow but he gets a little late to accelerate.

When he reaches in the middle, the truck from his left has moved very close to him. He turns his head to the left and watches that a giant truck is approaching at a killer speed towards him.

This was dangerous enough to make him panic. His hands get jammed on the handle of his scooter by the sudden astonishment he encounters.

He can’t accelerate and the truck driver despite realizing that he has to stop can’t apply the brakes at the right time and fatally hits the back of the scooter.

Yash Thakur gets thrown away and his head just hits the road brutally. Blood splatters on the floor and by the time all the people gather to attend him he is dead.

Both, Abhay and Avinash Rastogi move on with their respective lives unknowing of the event that has just taken place because of them.

They both have just led an 18 years old kid to DEATH.

Confidence shown at the wrong place can lead to someone’s death

You might be 110% confident that you will make it in case you break the signal but remember others might not.

Whether, it is your passion to conquer the world or your instinct to remove all the barriers nothing should outrage you to break the signal, since, this act might cause a life.

The statistics suggest that the number of deaths by road accidents in India have been increasing at a rapid rate.

It is very easy to blame the government in power about not taking enough protective measures or establishing stringent measures to make citizens abide by the law.

It is very easy to blame the traffic policemen for not catching the rule violators.

But, when will we start blaming ourselves for breaking the red light?

When will we start controlling our urge to break the signal?

The law is same for everybody and we should enforce ourselves to abide by it.

If we have to catch the train and there are 4 signals on our way to the station. A simple math suggests that, in the worst case scenario, if all of them showed red at our arrival it would take simply 2 minutes extra or maximum 5 minutes extra (in case of traffic) to reach the station. We should factor in this time too before we leave.

Some people break the signal just out of impatience. It’s not like they would turn millionaires if they saved 60 seconds every day at the red light. A to-be millionaire wouldn’t do that in any case.

The number of such people is too big in metropolitan cities and a few emerging tier-2 cities of our country. Below graph shows that -

WRAP UP

An empire is formed by its people.

An empire can fight and win against any enemy, even if the enemy forces outnumber its force, only when its people are united and understand their responsibility of fighting the enemy forces, but no miraculous force can save an empire which is crumbled from within.

A crumbled empire is the one where people are lazy enough to fulfill their duties and responsibilities.

We, as citizens, have certain responsibilities of following some rules imposed by the constitution and we must abide by them. Or else, we cannot expect some external forces to do the job of serving prosperous times to us in a plate because as they say, “God helps those who help themselves.”