Last week, in Maharashtra, India, people celebrated Gudi Padwa, the first day of the lunisolar calendar year. A spring and harvest festival, Gudi Padwa is an important celebration here. It marks the new year. Among other things, the streets are flooded with vendors weaving marigolds, chrysanthemums, mango and neem leaves in strings and garlands. These are in great demand. People adorn the doors in their homes and offices, temples and even their vehicles with these garlands.
A day before Gudi Padwa, Rekha bought several kilograms of flowers and leaves at the Dadar flower market in Mumbai. Her children and she would spend the next 24 hours weaving these flowers into beautiful auspicious garlands for people to buy. Rekha had weaved flowers into garlands for as far as her memory could go. She remembered sitting on the pavement with her grandmother and learning to weave jasmines, marigolds, chrysanthemums, mango and neem leaves, and everything there is about running a flower business on the pavements of Mumbai. The upcoming week was very important to her. For the next nine days, Hindus would mark the beginning of the year with fasts, prayers and celebrations. It was one of those weeks where she would do good business by selling flowers. Like every year, it was time to pay off debts, pay annual rent and if possible, save some money for expenses that were always upon her. None of this was to be. The taxi she was riding on the way back from the flower market was hit by an over-speeding vehicle and she died within seconds of the crash.
Incidentally, we employed Rekha at our home to do our dishes. We addressed her as Masi, which means mothers sister. She may have been a year or two older than me, but probably because of her life experiences she had a persona that commanded respect. When I saw her name flashing on my cell phone that afternoon, I pictured her sitting on the pavement near my home, surrounded my marigolds. A visual I had seen before so many festivals for over 15 years. She had mentioned to me that she was off for the next two days at least. Why was she calling me? It was from one of the numerous numbers I had saved as hers. She did not own a phone and she did not know how to make phone calls. So when her son spoke into the phone, it was no surprise. I expected her to take the phone and ask me if it were imperative, she would come to do the dishes. Instead her son said that she had been killed on her way back from the flower market. I mumbled in disbelief. He must be mistaken. It could not be. She was not far from home…. the dense traffic prohibits speed, I thought. Hung up the phone. Rushed to the hospital.
I stood in a room that was below the mortuary in a public hospital. It was filled with the families of the taxi driver and Rekha Masi. The police were talking to a truck driver who was driving on the same road behind the taxi. He was reporting what he had seen. The mood in the room was hardly sombre. The fact that two people who set out of their homes to earn a living were injured and killed on the road had not sunk in. Yet, I heard many submissive remarks. The most inappropriate of all that offended my public health sensibilities: there is no divider on the flyover and therefore accidents happen. Drivers tend to overtake vehicles from the wrong side. I wanted to hush the mumble in the room and say it loud and clear: ‘THERE ARE NO ACCIDENTS!’. The words reverberated in my thoughts. Instead, I stood there in silence. The time to prevent had passed, before Rekha Masi and the taxi driver were killed.
In my public health classes and later during my doctoral studies, professors had drilled the fundamental of prevention into our understanding of the environments that we live in. An accident is a freak incident without an intent, that cannot be predicted or controlled. This incident could well have been prevented. Over-speeding and crossing over to the wrong side of the road to overtake the vehicle ahead, are violations of traffic regulations. Driving is a privilege with responsibilities. Violations harm human lives and contribute to an unsafe environment. Violations therefore cannot be deemed accidents. It is important to correct the terminology here because it is the primary reason behind our resigned acceptance of these incidents. These incidents are 100% preventable. Traffic regulations are drafted to safeguard human lives, for uneventful being on streets and roads. Whether in vehicles or not. If hailing a taxi on the street to get to work involves a risk to ones life, then we must evaluate the environments we are building.
India has over 350 million registered vehicles and the number of vehicles is only set to increase. It is estimated that one person is fatally injured every three minutes on Indian roads. Every single day fatalities that occur due to speeding, DUI, poor safety measures are misappropriated as accidents. Much is said about circumventing human error by mandating well engineered vehicles and roads. Yes, infrastructure and vehicles must be safe. Can they be foolproof? Over-speeding is a violation despite these provisions and threatens human lives. Globally, 92% of the fatalities from road crashes are known to occur on the roads in LMICs. More often than not, young and sole bread earners of families die due to road traffic injuries. Families are pushed into poverty and are often unable to recover from the socio-economic burden of the loss. I saw all of these statistics unfold in the room under the mortuary. The two victims have eighteen immediate family members and even though both were not sole earning members, they were both the primary providers for their families of eleven and seven. Twenty lives were uprooted in that moment when simple driving etiquettes were trespassed.
I grabbed from the internet a picture of the market where she purchased flowers
The probability that the taxi and the car involved in the incident, would both be adorned with marigolds and mango leaves on Gudi Padwa was much higher than the probability that a flower vendor and taxi driver would be killed by a driver violating speed limits in Mumbai city. That the later is increasingly possible, is worrisome. That the deceased could not go about their business and they were killed when at their occupation is a hazard that could be prevented, without a doubt! The flowers now adorn pictures of the two deceased in the incident, is the sad reality. This can and must change. Primary public health provision is a style societies must adopt and policy makers must prioritise. Health should be a fundamental consideration in every policy. It offers the greatest potential for socio-culturally and economically developed environments. The best that there is. Let’s begin by knowing and saying that there are no accidents.
