Yesterday one of my GrandUncle (Grandma’s Brother) died and we had to visit his funeral at Trichy. Since ours is a large family we had a around 10 folks who had to make it. Since it was heavily raining and everyone was not prepared for a drive we decided to hire a TempoTraveller. We all boarded the Van by 9 PM and it was all misery from then on.
- Because of unavailability of driver the Cab owner has sent another driver who has just completed his 13 hour shift.
- Immediately we found this guy sleeping while driving.
- Myself & 2 of my uncle had to engage in a conversation with the Driver to see to it that he is not sleeping.
- We took 5+ Tea breaks to refresh him.
- He feel sleep and applied breaks on the middle of the road & we have to thank almighty that there were no heavy vehicles behind us.
- He slept and he didn’t notice a lorry in the front and I had to alert him.
- Then twice he would have collided with a lorry.
- Then he took a nap for 30 min since he couldn’t resist his sleep.
- In spite of all this agony we were friendly with him. But the gesture was not reciprocated. When ladies wanted to find a good place to get refreshed. We missed a right turn to get to the Petrol Bunk. This guy refused to take a reverse or a U-turn. Instead we had to goto another Petrol Bunk which had nasty toilets.
Then we reached the place by 5.30 in the morning. What would take 3 – 4 hours to travel a distance of 300 KM took us double the time, with lot of stress… The price paid was myself & 2 of my uncles spent the whole night without any sleep… Also the condition of the vehicle deserver another blog…
What worries me is people are getting ruthless and there is not moral values, business ethics. The owner of the Cab has played with the lives of 10 people. He could have told that he is falling short of Driver. But the greed of making money has made him push a person who has already worked for 13 hours and had to drive another long distance and that too in the night.
Human lives have become too cheap these days…
AnandNataraj 