Mirror Magazine

Mirror Magazine

Get yourself a mountain bike
By Udena R. Attygalle
I’ve always believed the safest place on a busy street is on the pavement - walking. The next best place, I thought, was inside a big tough bus. I guess I missed the mark by a long way.

My thinking was, that since vehicles travel on the tarred part of the street, the pavement is ‘not dangerous’. And since a speeding car is no match for a bus in terms of intact body parts after collision, my logic seemed secure.

But when those ‘temporary’ stalls invade the pavements leaving only a narrow strip (for their customers!), the pedestrians are driven to the road, I’ve found. And when those on three and for that matter, four wheels find safe parking on the pavements, the coup is complete. The pavement has become a place where ‘small’ businesses and their clients park.

What with uneven slabs ready to take you down, rainy days become especially dangerous for the pedestrian. With the drainage system seemingly incorporated into the pavements, rainy days are also liable to make you get ‘cold feet’.

Although buses on local roads appear indestructible, with a scratch here, a dent there and a hole in the windscreen, recent news points otherwise. While on the road these big buses may pass off as hulks and excel in taking down pedestrians - off road they definitely have no use in knocking down trees, as found out recently.

Crowded so much that they tilt alarmingly and that too on a regular basis, one wonders what awesome things it must do to the weight-bearing parts of the bus. When you consider this weight is mostly human, it is a cause for alarm.

With brakes that groan at the best of times, how reliable are they with a full load to add to the momentum of the bus? Even if they worked, would the worn out tyres provide adequate traction? Yet the drivers seem incredibly complacent doing acrobatics - familiar and contemptuous, blissfully heading for disaster.

All in all, one can almost be convinced that the 2nd row from the outside, on the footboard is the safest place on a bus. You won’t get knocked down while passing lamp-posts and if the bus starts careening, you won’t be imprisoned by an assortment of heads, arms, legs and trunks.

Logic seems to present an obvious problem. Since people spend a lot of time travelling, those responsible should either make it agreeable or make the misery short. I’ve heard that in economically developed countries, public transport is such a breeze that it is as convenient as having your own vehicle.

It’s taken that we are hardly economically developed and a breeze is beyond us but considering the number of posh cars we have on the streets, shouldn’t public transport at least be something more than what it is now? Or is it that the people who matter don’t use public transport and the ones who use it do not matter?

All considered, it seems the best thing to do if you want to travel safely, is to get yourself a mountain bike and find a jungle trail that’ll take you where you want to go. I’ll bet that if there were some statistical method to gauge, you would be ‘significantly safer!’.

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