Col Shiv Choudhary (Retd)
shivchoudhary2@gmail.com
Every morning across India, a familiar scene plays out. Someone wakes up late, skips breakfast, checks the time anxiously and convinces himself that speed will recover what the clock has taken away. The accelerator becomes a solution to poor planning and unrealistic timelines . Lane cutting, jumping red lights and risky overtaking follow. It feels routine, yet this daily gamble quietly shapes many of the tragic headlines that appear the next day. In reality on our roads, hurry has become a habit with deadly consequences.
It is 8:50 am in Noida. A father drops his child at school and realises he is late for work. He presses harder on the accelerator, drives across lanes without signalling and jumps a light that has already turned red. A motorcyclist brakes sharply; a collision is narrowly avoided. He blames traffic congestion, unaware that the real mistake was made at home by waking up late, misjudging travel time and believing speed can compensate for delay. This scene is repeated daily not only in metro cities like Noida, Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru or Chennai but also in smaller towns like Jammu, Udhampur or Dehradun. Rush hour, congestion and our response to being late are predictable, yet we gamble with speed. Indeed, with the current traffic snarls, there is no co-relations between time and distance.
India records over 1.5 lakh death including 6000 in the UT of J&K every year due to road accidents, and most are linked to human error. Over speeding remains one of the leading causes. While not every crash happens because someone is running late, time pressure often acts as the silent trigger behind rash driving decisions. The need to “make up time” turns ordinary drivers into extra ordinary risk-takers. The road becomes a recovery zone for poor planning over time recovering.
The consequences are especially painful in the mountainous districts. Look at Jammu and Kashmir where during 2019, in Doda district, an overloaded vehicle skidded off a mountain road and plunged into a deep gorge, killing dozens. In Kishtwar district, a mini-bus veered off the road into a ravine, leaving families shattered overnight. Rajouri has witnessed similar tragedies, where a single miscalculation on a treacherous curve transformed a routine commute into a mass casualty event. Investigations and survivors frequently point to over speeding, overloading with no checks by the traffic management staff, mechanical neglect, passenger sitting on bonnet, use of mobile phones by the drivers, late night sleep, alcohol consumption, and drivers trying to maintain unrealistic schedules on unforgiving terrain. Mountain roads do neither forgive haste not provide a margin of error. A few seconds of impatience can mean a fall into eternity.
The pattern is not confined to the hills. On Delhi’s Ring Road and Mumbai’s Eastern Express Highway, high-speed crashes have claimed young lives during late-night races and hurried morning drives. Accidents on the Yamuna Expressway have shown how wide and smooth roads can create a false sense of safety. In fast-growing cities such as Indore, Jaipur, Raipur and Dehradun, rapid expansion has outpaced enforcement, creating stretches where speed thrills override safety norms. Across hilly states from Himachal Pradesh to Nagaland, buses tumbling into gorges have become grim seasonal headlines, often attributed to brake failure or poor roads but just as often linked to haste and human misjudgement.
Why does this continue despite widespread awareness? Enforcement remains inconsistently on papers and accountability often missing. Traffic laws exist, yet their implementation is elusive. Drivers often assume they can escape penalties. Wrong-side driving, signal jumping, riding without helmets and ignoring seatbelts are common sights. When punishment is uncertain, urgency overwhelms restraint. In smaller towns, enforcement gaps are even more visible, and the perceived cost of breaking rules appears low compared to the imagined benefit of saving a few minutes.
Licensing systems also need scrutiny. Many drivers obtain licences without rigorous testing of hazard perception or defensive skills. Controlling a vehicle is not the same as understanding risk. Doubling speed more than doubles stopping distance. At 80 km per hour, a vehicle travels over 22 metres every second. A brief glance at a mobile phone means driving blind across the length of a building. On a foggy morning in Srinagar or a rain-soaked curve in the hills, such blindness can be fatal. Yet speed is often mistaken for competence rather than recognised as compounded danger.
Cultural attitudes reinforce the problem. Punctuality is flexible in many social settings. Meetings and functions begin late. We treat time as elastic until we sit behind the wheel and try to compress it through acceleration. Children observe this behaviour closely. A parent who routinely jumps signals or abuses fellow drivers plants seeds of indiscipline that may surface years later in similar habits.
Economic pressure adds another dimension. App-based delivery workers are rated by speed. Bus drivers operate under tight schedules and truckers push through fatigue to meet deadlines. A driver who fears penalties or salary cuts for delay may take risks he would otherwise avoid. Time urgency merges with financial urgency, increasing danger. Fatigue reduces reaction time and impairs judgment and decision making. Added stress, loud music, engaging driver in talks, using mobile, alcohol and untreated health conditions lead to shrinking margin for error further.
Time pressure is normalised and speed is equated with efficiency while enforcement lacks certainty. Training lacks depth and consequences seem negotiable. Each accident is mourned briefly and then absorbed into routine, treated as an isolated tragedy rather than a predictable outcome of collective behaviour. Weather compounds the risk, particularly in mountainous districts like Rajouri, Poonch, Doda, Kishtwar and across valley. Snowfall, fog and landslides slow traffic, yet some drivers attempt to maintain unrealistic speed despite reduced visibility and slippery surfaces. On steep gradients, gravity is unforgiving. One misjudged overtaking attempt on a blind curve can wipe out dozens of lives in seconds.
Solutions must operate at multiple levels. Enforcement should be technology-driven and consistent, leaving little room for discretion, evasion or manipulation. Automated speed detection, strict penalty recovery and transparent reporting can strengthen deterrence. Licensing systems must test hazard perception and scientific understanding of speed. Schools can introduce a chapter on road safety education early, teaching children that patience is protection. Employers can stagger reporting times and avoid unrealistic commuting expectations. Public messaging must redefine punctuality as planning, not panic.
Leaving fifteen minutes earlier should be viewed as a safety decision, not a luxury. India’s roads are shared spaces for pedestrians, cyclists, animals, handcarts, cars, buses, and heavily loaded trucks and trawlers moving together in a fragile balance. They demand humility and foresight. The clock may push us forward, but it cannot shield us from the laws of physics. Most fatal crashes are not acts of destiny. They are consequences of decisions shaped by hurry, weak enforcement, inadequate training and cultural indifference to time discipline. The stories from any accident prone area, road or NH across the country are not distant tragedies; they are warnings. We must remember that reaching late is inconvenient while not reaching at all is irreversible. We all should always remember the old adage “Time lost can be regained, but a life lost to haste is gone forever.”
(The writer is a motivational speaker and change maker).
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