Seat Belts

 It was the unfortunate demise of Cyrus Mistry on 4th September  in a tragic road accident which brought the focus on seat belts for rear seat passengers. Seat belts for the front seats in four wheelers is mandatory as per traffic regulations in vogue all over the world. But we Indians take pride in not following the rules, so, often we have front seat driver or co driver  giving the belt a miss. After all, who wants any restrictions, when we were born free in a free country, we are free to do what we wish to. Seat belts warning signs be damned and by the way, they can easily be silenced by hoodwinking the system by merely mating the two ends without actually getting under the seat belt. Traffic policemen in India, by and large are magnanimous people and ignore this violation, they get their coffers full with Masks violations in the Covid era, or with merely over-speeding ones, with speed restrictions of 40 and 50 km per hour, drivers are bound to overshoot.

I have had my share of an escapade where the seat belt was the saviour. While on UN Peace Keeping Mission in Cote D'Ivoire, out on a vehicle based patrol with a Pakistani officer driving the Toyota Forerunner and I was the Co-driver. Cote d'Ivoire incidentally has an excellent road network from one end of the country to the other and with sparse population and a strife torn nation then, the speed limit of vehicles was often ignored. Unfortunately this one time, we took a detour from the highway, onto the dirt track and my friend's reflexes were a little too slow. The vehicle lost its balance and went turtle, my Pak officer was so scared that he admitted later that he had started to mutter his fatiha (prayers at the time of death), I was nicely strapped on and was hung upside down like a spider in my web of the seat belt. That was the closest I came to being a super hero, the friendly neighbourhood Spiderman. The rear seat was occupied by two more Military Observers from our Team, who too sustained minor injuries. The seat belt came to my rescue, else I would have broken a couple of bones, as it is I am very injury prone. Despite such personal examples, my better half is not convinced and finds it too much of a bother and manages without it most of the time. Interestingly ladies in our household are brave-hearts and all of them decide to give it a skip unless the traffic cops are in close vicinity. 

Three point seat belts in automobiles are different from the strap on seat belts in aircrafts. Aircraft seat belts are a prerequisite during the take off and landing as the flight stewardesses remind us each time we get airborne. We have undertaken flights also without any seat-belts as anyone who has flown in service aircrafts will confirm. When you have meat on hoof        (goats/sheep for the uninitiated), chickens as your co passengers, it is obviously difficult to find seat belts for ourselves. We were just grateful that we secured a seat on the flight which saved us from the drudgery of the road convoy which took two days to cover what the courier flight took merely two hours. Needless to say we had complete faith in our pilots in delivering us in one piece along with our rations.

There is one more species who would like the introduction of seat belts and being made mandatory, have you guessed it, politicians of course, after all which politician wants to let go off his seat of power. I am sure they would all be secretly praying for this invention which would ensure that they too get strapped on for life...