Regular readers will have noticed that I have referred more than once to the suicidal approach adopted by road users in India. As time has gone on I've become increasingly incensed by the the way that local and national media refer to incidents of death or injury on the road as 'mishaps'.
So instead of ranting about it here in the blog (for a change), I decided to write to the editor of the Herald newspaper in Goa and suggested that, as a paper with a campaigning stance on many subjects, it should campaign on issues of road safety. I further suggested that it could start by referring to these incidents not as mishaps, which are defined in the OED as unlucky accidents, but as the senseless wastes of human life I believe them to be, due mainly to the total lack of regard to any safe driving practices by road users of all descriptions.
I was very surprised to see my letter in print, almost verbatim, in the paper this morning and felt some sense of achievement that my rant may have started something.
This small sense of self-satisfaction evaporated when I turned the page and saw an article describing the "15 people seriously injured in a bus / truck collision mishap" .
So instead of ranting about it here in the blog (for a change), I decided to write to the editor of the Herald newspaper in Goa and suggested that, as a paper with a campaigning stance on many subjects, it should campaign on issues of road safety. I further suggested that it could start by referring to these incidents not as mishaps, which are defined in the OED as unlucky accidents, but as the senseless wastes of human life I believe them to be, due mainly to the total lack of regard to any safe driving practices by road users of all descriptions.
I was very surprised to see my letter in print, almost verbatim, in the paper this morning and felt some sense of achievement that my rant may have started something.
This small sense of self-satisfaction evaporated when I turned the page and saw an article describing the "15 people seriously injured in a bus / truck collision mishap" .
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