Two wheeled ramblings..

So, the other day, someone sort of told me i'm a good driver. It was a friend of a friend whom i was not previously acquainted with, and apparently my friend had contrasted our driving styles and told him that i am a good driver. i was understandably miffed that my friend didn't convey this piece of valuable opinion directly to me, but i suppose there were reasons behind that. obviously, my head would grow heavy from the praise, to the effect that it would hideously upset my center of gravity when cornering, and that is decidedly not a good thing. of course, i didn't start writing this as an exercise in self-effacing humour, i had other reasons. reasons like the fact that i have probably received maybe five or six compliments on my driving ever since i've been legally allowed to drive.

to put things in perspective, my mom was once so terrified sitting behind me on her 50cc two stroke moped(that had a speedometer that maxed at 60kmph) that she actually jumped off it when she thought i was going to crash it. she preferred scrapes and bruises from the road to broken limbs from the lamp-post i was heading too close to. to this day she does not believe my explanation that i was avoiding a speed bump adjacent to the lamp-post, and that i was in control of the vehicle the entire time. she has never ridden pillion on a two wheeler that had me on the front seat ever since then, and this is a true story. those of you fortunate enough to have met amma would know for a fact that i can't possibly make up stuff like this. when i got my bike four years ago, people who used to ride with me used to employ words like lunatic, batshit insane etc, to describe my style of driving. several people had sworn never to get on my bike again, and there was one case where a friend's boyfriend had specifically forbidden her from ever getting on a bike being ridden by me. each time i try telling someone that i think my driving is pretty okay, they invariably point out my accident record, which stands at 28 accidents if you count the minor bumps and spills as well, and my claim of being at least a halfway decent driver would end there. so, to be introduced to a total stranger as a man with good driving manners, was a surprise to say the least.

So, all this brings me to lunacy. I recently turned [classified number], and well, since birthdays usually remind you of how old you're getting, i did a bit of introspection. i always used to believe that the lunacy you have when you're a kid sort of evaporates away with age, and is replaced with sensibleness and boredom. this is true for most of the population, but there are exceptions of course. and i used to rue it on each birthday, since i knew i would be doing less crazy things in the year ahead, on account of being older. my theory was that this lunacy and sense of invincibility are absolutely essential if i wanted to live life on my terms, and these qualities draining away with age isn't a prospect one can look forward to. but then, ever since i got my bike, my opinion on this subject has been varying slowly as well. i now kinda realize that this lunacy, if untempered, isn't the adamantium that i thought it to be, but instead it was more like kryptonite, if you would pardon the superhero references.

sure a few close calls and accidents helped me along with this realization, but thats not the point. the point has more to do with the sense of invincibility that i mentioned earlier. the point, even more specifically, is that it is false, this sense of invincibility. there are those who would, after a close call or accident they escaped unscathed from, think that it was a matter of their invincibility. that nothing would happen to them. i admit to thinking that way a few times as well. but as you go along, and as you evolve as a biker (a familiar refrain for those amongst my annual readership of 1.78 people who were probably patient enough to read these musings of mine on biking), you realize that there is a significant difference between what you can actually do and what you think you can do. there is a difference between how fast you can go as opposed to how fast you think you can go, how much you can bank as opposed to how much you think you can, and how quickly you can stop as opposed to how quickly you think you can stop. and that realization isn't necessarily the death of lunacy, it's more of a tempering.

the lunacy and invincibility would make you want to try out MotoGP levels of bank angles on the curvy road leading to your office. and let's be honest, it would be fun to try that. in fact, to push yourself to the limit doing anything like that does require a healthy amount of insanity. the tempering business that i'm talking about would try and keep you from going over your limits and making a spectacle of yourself for the other employees walking on that same road after their lunch breaks. the fact that you didn't crash isn't a victory for sensibleness. but the fact that you pushed a limit while acknowledging it, the fact that you tried, is a victory for a tempered lunacy. while all of this might sound like a justification for doing less dangerous stuff on account of getting older, i sincerely believe in it.

in the end, i do realize that i'm still far from a perfect driver. like i've mentioned in one of these posts long back, i still make mistakes that warrant a kick on the backside sometimes. but as the kilometers have been racking up on my odometer, the realization that all of these evaluations and self-appraisals and improvement efforts mean nothing in the face of things beyond your control has planted itself firmly in my mind. and that all you can do in the face of things like chance is to continuously try and get better, have fun doing it, and to hell with the rest. and i suspect i could apply that to other walks of my life as well.

PS - i think the really dangerous thing i did here was posting twice in a day. also, it's funny how these ramblings materialize when i'm sleep-deprived. it's bloody five thirty in the morning, good night.

Plane crashes and the ensuing danse macabre..

this has been a bit of a bad year for aviation. the AF447 crash in the atlantic, the yemenia crash off the coast of moroni, the turkish airlines crash at amsterdam schiphol, the afriqiyah airlines crash at tripoli and now the air india express crash in mangalore. each of these crashes led to extensive reporting by the media, as they well should be covered. but somehow when it comes to aviation, the media never seem to get even the basic facts right. this, in turn, means the general public never get to know the facts about these accidents. all they get are some twisted half truths which further propel the aviation related myths that are already existent in their minds. whenever i see these reports, i am usually reminded of something i read in the outlook magazine long back, in the diaries section that they used to publish on the last page. it was a story about a reporter who was rushing to cover a mig-21 crash that happened near palam airport, and even before he reached the site he was relaying back 'facts' to his publication, making outrageous claims that there were 30 people on the aircraft. i would think that pretty much everyone knows that a fighter plane cannot carry more than 2 people, 3 in some cases. and turns out the journo's cabbie corrected him and told him that very same fact.

even though these journalistic lapses are generally annoying, the fact that so many crashes happened this year meant that the annoyance has been slowly creeping within me and taking the form of full blown anger. and the reporting by indian media in the aftermath of the air india express crash was the last straw that broke the camel's back. do they even think before they send out these reports? there are some basic journalistic ethics that need to be followed but i guess in these days of sensationalism, those go right out the window, and titles like 'BURNING PLANE' in font size bazillion are what sells. even so, i feel compelled to write this, knowing that this may not make any difference.

the accident : we are all too keen to pass verdict before we know what happened. this has been the case with pretty much every accident, not just air crashes. in india, if two vehicles collide, almost 90% of the time the blame is placed on the bigger vehicle. unless the smaller vehicle did something ridiculously and obvsiously stupid, the smaller vehicle gets away scot free. similar rules are extended to the sky too. the first half-fact is usually treated as the final cause of the accident. in this instance, there are reports which state that the pilot missed his touchdown point on the runway byh 2000 feet. this was immediately labelled as pilot error, and some of todays papers insist that this was the cause of the accident. none of them talk about other possibilities and facts. no one mentions that the actual zone on the runway where he can safely touchdown extends at least a thousand feet, and that even if he missed that by another thousand, he might still have had enough runway left to stop his plane. no one talks of the millions of possibilities that couldve caused the pilot to miss by thousand feet, if at all he did that. i would say that there are a good number of plausible scenarios where the pilot need not have been at fault. yeah alright, truth is boring.

the point here is this, avoid speculation. its stupid, it propagates unnecessary lies, and i personally think that its disrespectful to the people involved. these crashes are a reminder to us of the dangers inherent in aviation, no matter how much we've tried to mitigate them. and people sitting on armchairs on the ground and commenting on the jobs of those who actually face these dangers angers me. to the media, please state the known facts, and please verify them before stating them. if you wish to speculate, do so intelligently, through someone who actually knows a thing or two about not just flying, but air accidents on a whole. the so called aviation experts presented on the tv channels so far are prize chumps and jackasses in my opinion, who are spouting half baked opinions. get credible people, if you wish to discuss this incident, and not someone who would disrespect the dead crew for a few soundbytes.

the airline : air india suffers from what i like to call 'the aeroflot syndrome'. the airline has done a lot of cutting edge stuff over its lifetime, but being a state owned carrier it will always have public perception going against it, especially in terms of safety and service. sure, some of the service points are debatable, and i'll gladly debate that another day in another post, but i see the safety perception as a bit unfair. i wouldnt go out of my way to vouch for their safety, but i will say they are as safe or unsafe as pretty much any other airline in india. their maintenance practices are probably better than average, would be my personal assessment. but note, its only a personal assessment. in any case, some sections of the media making dubious hints at air india maintenance etc would be well advised to stay clear. i mean, what is it with these people? cant they wait at least for the interim report of the accident investigation? and if you look at the air crashes the past year, it includes a first rate carrier like Air France, as well as carriers like Yemenia who aren't exactly well known. it includes brand new airliners as well as old ones. what does it all say? nothing. wait for the individual damn investigations to conclude.

the airplane : the 737-800 has had 8 hull loss incidents so far. if you count from the first generation 737, thousands have been built. this one had a line number 2481, and was two years old. what does that mean, again? probably nothing. we dont know YET. there is always a section that comes up with dubious assesments of the aircraft type, sub-type and even manufacturer. the 737 is not unsafe. nor is the a330, which had two crashes in 12 months. hell, even the tu154 that crashed with the polish president on board, which is a soviet era aircraft known to have a bad safety reputation, is acutally quite a safe aircraft since many of its accidents were caused by factors beyond the aircraft or crew. a few were shot down by missiles, one ran into snow ploughs on the runway that atc had failed to clear, and one was in a mid air collision due to atc error. yet even aviation buffs give me a weird look when i tell them i want to fly on a 154. i do not have a deathwish, i insist it is a safe plane. sure, there have been planes with design flaws, but the planes involved in this year's crashes dont have any known serious flaws, and to insinuate otherwise without proof would be irresponsible. even in the case of the fedex cargo md-11 that crashed in narita, this holds true. the md-11 has certain quirks of handling, but i doubt it has been established as a design 'flaw' yet.

the airport : mangalore airport has a bit of a peculiar runway, which is elevated, and has steep runoffs at either end. it is debatable whether there was adequate space in case of a runway overrun. people will second guess the decisions behind making the runway the way it is now, and it is very probable that the runway may have played a part in the accident. probable, not conclusive. but guess what, a sizeable number of airports have such problems. we build airports where we can, not necessarily where we ideally should be. we cannot always build perfect airports, sometimes they have to be built within some constraints. in madeira, portugal, the runway extends out in to sea on huge pillars. this plane would probably have been a goner there too. what does that say? nothing. airports arent perfect, we have to work with what with have. huge runways on plain spaces are probably possible only in deserts. where there is population and terrain around, we adjust and work a little harder. deal with it.

the crew : one of the initial statements i heard on the news was that pilot error was ruled out because the captain had 10000 hours flying experience. sure, but that does not rule out error. it probably does minimize it, but does not rule it out. but ill concede that one since it's at least not disrespectful to the poor chap. then came the news that the pilot is a british national of serbian origin. there have been some two-bit publications making an issue out of foreign pilots working in india. the nationality of the pilot probably had nothing to do with the crash, such generalizations are borderline racist i would say. for example, all russian pilots arent drunk, all chinese pilots arent bad with english, and all spanish traffic controllers aren't atrocious with their accents. some are, but only just as many as you would find in india, england or the united states. in any case, the key is respect. indications of pilot error or not, speculation on their actions is useless at this point when no facts are known. also, i have a bone to pick with the pilot unions who have brought in pilot workload as a factor. the wreck hasnt stopped burning yet, and these hacks are already pushing union agenda. there isn't anything yet to prove pilot workload as a factor, and pilots should be the last ones making such claims before the investigation is complete. at least out of respect for two dead colleagues.

in conclusion : there is never one single cause for aviation accidents. it is always a series of systemic faults and flaws that culminates in an accident. sure, it may have been triggered by something immediate and plausible like pilot error, but there are always systemic underlying causes. in every damn accident. and the reason we have improved aviation safety over the years is because we have studied these over and over again, and imbibed the lessons industry-wide. in country like ours where there have been incidents where aspersions were cast over the findings of investigative proceedings in the past, the media has an important role and opportunity here to bring us some honest investigative journalism. it's always easy to make scapegoats out of pilots, and if the media stupidly plays up half truths, the real truth may get lost in the cacophony. sure, you could call it pilot error, and train all pilots flying to mangalore a few extra hours on the simulator to understand the airport better, but the systemic causes will strike elsewhere in a different form and incident, and claim more innocent lives with it. the focus should be on an honest investigation, and to learn the lessons from its as soon and as effectively as possible.