A day of rest and catch up with Garth followed by a lovely ride to Alipur Duar, not so lovely for the young man that crashed his van.
The ride was good today, good roads, lovely scenery and only 4 1/2 hours in the seat. We passed beautiful forests, tea plantations, towns & villages.
As I arrived at the crash they were dragging the driver out of his van and put him on the grass verge where they all left him! They instantly went to join the other men unload the sacks of onions from the back of the van which had tuned over and was blocking the road. I went over to see the driver and whilst he was moaning and in pain I couldn’t see any blood and assumed he would live. Garth gave him pain killers and stayed with him. Meanwhile the many men were still unloading the van and after 10 – 15 minutes had finished and with a few big heaves turned the van upright whereupon a man drove it off the road freeing the road for everyone to pass.
The driver was still on the grass verge and it was now obvious he had broken his leg badly. A few minutes later a few Indian men helped load the driver into a rickshaw / taxi, the young man was obviously in pain as he was now screaming. Oh, did I mention the policeman who arrived just after me and didn’t even walk over to the accident, I went over to him asked him if he was a policemen which he confirmed and then I told him there was an injured man, he looked away and did nothing the whole time I was there.
So my conclusion is that clearing the road was more important than checking the young driver was ok!
I could relate this experience to the one I had two weeks ago where there was a man lying motionless in the road and nobody would help him, when I started shouting at people to help him nobody would, in fact many laughed at my obvious concern!
One Response
Dan, I’ve seen much the same thing in India before. During rush hour a man fell off his motorbike (I think he either had heatstroke or a heart attack). The guy behind him on a moped got off his bike, I thought to go and help him, but actually he just picked up the motorbike – he’d upgraded! I told our taxi driver to stop, but by this point he had already weaved around the chap on the floor and refused to stop – as I looked back the traffic just moved around this new obstruction. When we got to the hotel and tried to insist someone was notified they just said “oh, it’ll be dealt with” – life is very cheap in some places!