When Cellphones Kill

answer it for you.

Stop the driver. Whether you are in a taxi, bus, your own car or a friend’s, you must stop any driver from speaking on the phone while driving. Consider what happened to a group of 26 people from Naraingarh village, Haryana, travelling in a mini-bus to Nahan, Himachal Pradesh, this July 11. They were speeding along the highway when driver Sandeep Kumar began talking on his cellphone. Although passengers seated near him asked him to concentrate on his driving, Kumar paid no attention. He lost control and slammed the vehicle into a tree, killing eleven. Kumar and some others were seriously injured.

That needn’t have happened had the passengers been absolutely firm.

Recently, two colleagues and I took a taxi and were riding back to our office after a lunch meeting. We were in the thick of traffic when the driver’s cellphone rang. When he promptly answered it, my senior colleague from the back seat requested him not to use the phone. But the driver wouldn’t listen. “Bandh karo!” my colleague insisted loudly, grabbing the driver’s shoulder. “Stop it!”

He had to hang up. When it comes to safety, never settle for less.