What is it with India?s speedsters? As Delhi, once the very exemplar of ?snail?s pace? movement, woke up to yet another horrific news report of a car crash on a deserted street, it is time to pay serious attention to the role of a new intoxicant of the youth. The baleful influence of alcohol, especially on a driver?s motor skills and neural responses, is well recognised, and drunk driving remains a crime that deserves deterrents of the most stringent kind. But how must public policy deal with speed as an intoxicant in its own right? According to information released by Delhi Police, the Skoda full of collegians that veered out of control at around 4.40 am, Sunday, and crashed against a kerb close to the National Museum, was attempting to negotiate a turn at 180 km per hour, thrice the speed limit. Whether or not the forensic evidence supports this claim, it is a sign of the times that the speed is widely believed to be a close approximation of the truth.
What?s going on? Revolution. More revolutions-per-minute, actually, to be automotively precise. Over the last decade or so, India?s wealthy young men?speed daredevilry is mostly a male thrill?have acquired increasingly magnificent driving machines with increasingly stunning speedometer ranges. The very experience of pace, from the cricket field to economic progress, is coming to form a little cult of its own. Then, there are other pulse quickeners as well, such as the pounding soundtracks of popular films like Dhoom and now Race that can be heard blaring forth from car stereos?though sober listeners would realise that these ditties are about matters of the heart, not stepping on the gas pedal or burning rubber trails down the street. Either way, such is the state of youth affairs in India that trying to clamp down on speed intoxication with control measures will not yield the desired results. Aspirations have sped up and remain on the fast track. What the country should do is grant these speedsters the physical tracks required to see just how far they can?soberly?push the speedometer needle of their hot new sets of wheels. Let them, thus, safely exorcise their inner demons. Abandoned airstrips, such as those at Safdarjung in Delhi and Juhu in Mumbai, could be dedicated to this new form of auto recreation, and a fee charged for a vroom down the length.