Learn driving responsibly as lives could be at stake

Representational image. Pic/iStock

A tragic accident occurred in Kandivli recently, when a learner driver accidentally pressed the accelerator instead of the brake of the car he was learning on. The car went out of control and struck a woman who was passing by, along with two other people, including a 16-year-old boy. Chaos ensued, the car ran over the woman's head, causing instantaneous death. The other two sustained injuries and were discharged after receiving primary treatment at the hospital.

According to an eyewitness in the report, who incidentally was also a victim, was heading towards Kandivli to buy plumbing materials when he heard some kind of noise. Before he could react, a white WagonR car struck him, and he fell. He then witnessed the same car hitting a boy and saw an elderly woman lying on the road bleeding from her head.

Two occupants of the car immediately rushed the woman to Shatabdi Hospital in an auto. The doctors declared the woman dead.

The learner driver at the wheel, was accompanied by a companion sitting next to him. The learner accidentally pressed the accelerator and the woman perished in the horrific scenario. One cannot have learner drivers ‘practising' on our roads. The driver should have been in a driving school car, which has a second set of brakes for the companion who is teaching him. The learning part simply does not work in our city, with its crowds and traffic. Learners will naturally tend to panic and get confused, leading to accidents and humongous tragedies as in the Kandilvi case. The drivers must take the wheel only after learning extensively in a driving school with experts.

Companions, friends, relatives are not teachers and cannot be teaching people to drive cars. Keep the learning for the schools. Lives cannot be brought back and at times, limbs may be lost, too, for the injured changing so many lives in an instant.