Accidents …..Do they happen by chance?

Accidents happen all over the world frequently.
Are these by chance or a quirk of fate like we think or is it due to any other reason.

Lately we have been reading Train mishaps and the Railway authorities institute enquiry commissions to get into its root cause.

There has been an accident in Mumbai last week.
A Local Train passing by had its Door Panel flying off and hitting passengers on another upcountry train.
A child has suffered injuries to the hand and another lady has her arms below the elbow severed off.
Who would have thought that a door panel from an opposite train would fly off and hurt the passengers on another train?
It is so unusual, that it defeats all our imagination.

Accidents are caused due to two main reasons.
Unsafe Act.
Unsafe condition.

Unsafe Act: In this case the child had its hand jutting out of the window and the lady was sitting on the door landing due to lack of space and both got injured. Yes both are attributed to unsafe acts as generally one needs to be inside the train so that nothing would hurt us.

Unsafe Condition: The Door panel should not have got dislocated from an opposite train and fly off.
Isn’t it absurd that this has happened.
The Door cannot just wrench itself off due to the speed of the train.
It indicates that the door panel has not been fitted properly and or it would have become loose due to frequent usage.
But then preventive maintenance of trains should have been carried out at periodical intervals and the hinges etc should have been checked in order to prevent the door falling off.
In this accident the Unsafe condition is the one which has posed a far serious danger to the people than the Unsafe act.

Reducing Unsafe Condition by Good Design:
In our developing world unsafe acts are to be prevented as much as possible by good design of the equipments.
For instance let’s take a toaster in our house ,its design ought to be such that nobody can insert a finger into the hot area,only a bread slice should go in and not the finger.

In order to reduce accidents all unsafe acts should be avoided whereas it is humanly impossible to do just that so the onus of preventing accidents is on reducing the unsafe condition.

Internet and its usage

We all have got used to the Internet and its usefulness.

Gone are the days when people needed to communicate to each other thro long letters sent by the Postal route. The letters took time to reach but people still communicated to each other.
Now it is the age of internet and mobile telephony.
E mails have become an essential means of communication and corresponding to everybody has become easy and fast.

In the past people tended to write long letters, now the e mails are to the point and often crisp and short.
The mobile telephony has taken the communication to the next level thro sms and faster connectivity.

In the past we in India had to book long distance calls thro the local telephone authorities and it used to cost a lot.
Now talking to your friends/folks abroad has become easy and cheap. No more booking calls and wasting precious time in awaiting the connection.
Talking to somebody in USA is as fast as talking to somebody in Mumbai.
The SMS has further made the texting messages shorter. The language is taking its toll, and now the people write to each other in a manner that new English language has been invented!

The advent of internet has brought in its wake manifold advantages.
One can browse sites, learn new things sitting at home, and get to know the news across the world in an instant.

The usage of internet is spreading fast.
India has a huge population of 1.2 billion and the internet awareness is spreading fast. Over 80% of the Indian population lives in Villages. The Internet has given them an opportunity to know about the world.
The internet usage in India is estimated to be 121 million increasing steadily year by year when it was only 53 million in 2008.It has seen an increase of 100% in three years. It can only grow exponentially in the years to come.

Compare this with Mobile telephone which has a figure of 700 million in India indicating the reach of this facility to a wider audience. Of course the mobiles are different because now every household of say 4 people, it would be with every member of the household unlike internet connectivity which generally would be one per household. It should be understood that possessing a computer is far more expensive so the reach is restricted.

The Indian government has recently launched a cheap alternative to the tablet and with this the reach would increase many times in the next few years. The mobiles are now equipped with internet facility so the reach of internet to the rural folks can be made easy as mobiles have reached the common man on the street.

It is very interesting to note that in Sweden the statistics show that even three year old children now access internet.

Internet is indeed a great boon to our civilization since the invention of written language.

India has done it……F1 Racing.

Was it a miracle or was it just good luck, but we did it as a nation.
Poor Past:
All of us had our apprehension about F1 race in India.
We cannot forget the fiasco in commonwealth Games held a few months back in New Delhi.
The Arrangements were inadequate and so sloppy that as a country we got a bad name.
The International committee threatened to stop the games but somehow the situation was saved by the Indian Government.
The Government has since then initiated cases against Suresh Kalmadi and others for misusing the funds.
With this background as a nation we were very nervous about F1 event, but the arrangements were really world class and the track a beauty.
The Buddh International Circuit:
The circuit is 5.14 Kms long and it has been designed by the famous circuit designer Hermann Tilke.
It has an interesting feature that cars can reach a maximum speed of 320 kmph making it the second fastest circuit after Monza in Milan, Italy.
The expected lap time around is 1 minute 27 seconds approximately and the race would have 60 laps.
Whatever we could see on the TV it really looked great and the International Committee of Car Racing has appreciated the arrangement.
Of course there was a stray dog menace just a day before the event and the same was reported in the press, which was really embarrassing as such intrusion of the dog on a race day would have caused serious accidents.
Car racing is a dangerous sport which leads to serious accidents and sometimes deaths on the track, which we have witnessed in the best of venues. We as a country have inadequate resources to cater to the injured and such accidents would have added to our woes.
The security was strong and well deployed after the fiasco of Metallica which was cancelled due to poor security arrangements.
Tickets:
The tickets were priced from Rs 2500 with 6500 seats to Rs 35000 for 20156 seats, the median being Rs 6500 for 36838 seats. The weighted average cost per ticket works out to be Rs 13062 per seat.
It is a big price to pay for an event but it is worthwhile as such events have never ever been held in India before.
The Race: 30.10.11
What a race it was, once again Sebastian Wettel of Red Bull won the race.
He was always in the lead and did not allow the second driver Jenson Button of McLaren to overtake him.
He finished the race in 1Hr: 30Min: 35.002Seconds. With Jenson doing it in 1Hr: 30Min: 43.435Seconds.
As you see it was close which is the case with F1 racing.
This was Sebastian’s eleventh victory in 17 races this season.
The third place was won by Fernando Alonso of Ferrari.
Indian Driver Narain Karthikeyan was participating and he did proud to India.
Mr. Adrian Sutil finishing 9Th for Sahara Force India and Karthikeyan finishing 17Th for Hispania.
Crash:
The crash of Felipe Massa of Ferrari and Lewis Hamilton of McLaren was unfortunate and Hamilton finished at the seventh place. He really made up for the time lost due to the crash.
Felipe Massa could not even complete the race.
Audience:
The crowd was 90000 plus and to manage this huge crowd would have been tough for the UP police.
Kudos to the authorities for managing the event without any untoward incident.
The race itself was like any other F1 race and it evoked huge clientele thro TV and other medium.
The reporters from all over the world were there to cover the event.
Celebrities:
There were many celebrities who witnessed this epoch making event.
Shahrukh Khan, SachinTendulkar, Arjun Rampal,Priety Zinta,Rowan Atkinson many other HNI’s graced the event.
Sachin had the great task of waving the chequered flag at the end of the race.
Image of India:
India now would be on the Tourist map more so because the F1 would have brought in many foreign guests and they would have savored our cuisine and our hospitality.
There would be no looking back now; India can only go ahead with such great events in future.
The Authorities need to keep the venue spick and span and good maintenance over the years is a must to ensure world class facility.
Kudos to Ms Mayavati the chief minister of UP and the Jaypee group which constructed the stadium and organized the event at Greater Noida.
Here is wishing India all The Best to manage such events in future.
We are proud to be Indians.
Mera Bharat Mahan.