On the road with Riyaz

Talkers exceed performers. Plus, most of the talkers don’t walk their talk. Pure verbal diahorrea. They dive into their kitty to find excuses to rationalize their inability to actualize their thoughts.

All these thoughts gently skim the mindscape as I watch Nijum Riyaz effortlessly drive the new model Wagon R on the Kazipet to Sircilla highway from the navigator’s seat. The vehicle is the Driver Training Institute-owned vehicle for training purposes. How do I know? The extra brake pedals are for the navigator to apply in emergencies. Of course, the fifty-plus Riyaz, principal of the said Institute in the politically important constituency of Minister for Urban Development K T Rama Rao, incidentally the son of Telangana Chief Minister KCR, alerted me as soon as I climbed into the vehicle at the Kazipet car parking lot.

Riyaz’s gyan-sharing on various aspects of the trucking segment — including the fleet owners, corporates, truck drivers, and training institutes — ensures the journey is rich in every aspect. Such was the strong and non-stop articulation of observations and assessments of Riyaz, who would bid goodbye to the Institute he helped set up for his employer, India’s number two heavy commercial vehicle maker, viz., Ashok Leyland.

Though the Hindjuja flagship is not in the pole position, its record of setting up and managing driver training institutes has no rivals. Tatas, the country’s numero uno in the HCV segment, is nowhere near Leyland. Three cheers to Leyland!

The 25-acre Namakkal one in Tamilnadu tops my list. Next is the 13-acre Chindwara one in the constituency of the erstwhile Union minister for transport Kamalnath. Even the huge Sircilla, Telangana one, which Riyaz presided over until recently before returning home for a new journey. Spacious. Excellent tutors/trainers. Simply put, well-managed.

“Do you know the meaning of road markings?” asks Riyaz without lifting his eyes off the macadamized road in front and maintaining a safe distance from a truck refusing him space to overtake.

Luckily, I know the answer. Is Riyaz testing my limited gyan on road safety? Maybe. It may not be. Good, he asked that question that enabled me quickly revisit answers tucked somewhere in the cranium. At sixty-six, memory plays tricks. Such out-of-the-blue questions awakened the somnolent cells and helped me revise whatever I learned.

“Of course. But why are you asking?,” I responded

“Some time ago, we were training a batch of long haul truck drivers who attended the refresher course in our Institute. We displayed the broken white lines on the roads and opened the floor for a response. Most of them remained silent, but for one. Do you know, what he said?” saying this, Riyaz began to laugh out loud.

Our travel companion Syed Kausar Hussein quizzically looked at me, not knowing the reason for Riyaz’s outburst. Laughter is healthy, no doubt. But…

Riyaz spoke thus: “One of the drivers stood up and said the highways department did not have sufficient money to paint an uninterrupted white line. No budget. Whenever they were given full money, they painted full white lines.” Now it was my turn to laugh. Loud, of course.

Well, that’s the level of understanding of road signages by long-haul truck drivers in India. Hang on. Why only them? Did you and me, who drive passenger cars on the same highways, aware of such signages and know the meaning? I doubt. Therefore, we have no right to laugh at such responses. But Riyaz has the right to laugh because he knows the correct answer. He not only knows the rules, but practices those tenets.

I asked him why he was not alerting the truck in front by using the horn and overtaking.

Riyaz: Maybe the truck has a genuine reason for giving space for our vehicle to overtake.

Almost for 20 minutes, we followed the truck on the two-lane, heavily trafficked highway. Riyaz does not want to take risks. Why hurry?

After some distance, the truck in front moved to the side and was permitted to move ahead. Then we noticed a tractor filled with hay moving at snail speed in front of that truck. How many of us would have that kind of patience and reasoning to understand the psyche of other road users? I doubt.

***
His phone handling while at the steering wheel was a rare sight.

His phone kept ringing regularly during the three-hour drive on the busy Telangana roads. Night has fallen, and barring some stretches, the moving vehicles’ shed light on the path ahead.

One glance at his mobile phone and he decided not to attend. But four calls he did attend. One from his mother. Two of his colleague whom he sent to a client site for training. And one call to a government official’s office on the premise that the caller id he noticed on the dial could be vital and should not go unattended.

So, he would slow down and park the vehicle on the lips of the road, put it on parking gear, and take the call. Once the call got over, he would move. Never once did he lift the phone while he was driving the vehicle.

I have several friends who care two hoots for such niceties. They rejoiced that they were multitasking: driving and conversing. Risky guys.

Rahul Singh is a neighbor and an Uber/Ola driver. He would be plugged into earphones and chatting while driving, and I told him I would never prefer to travel with him at the wheel.

Riyaz conceded that hands-free phone handling is also risky. “Your mind and other senses are distracted. You think your eyes see what is in front. It does not. The eyes-brain coordination is delinked. The conversation one has over the phone could be a mood-changer and alter the physical chemistry leading to various effects: good or bad. Suh mood alterations impact driving,” Riyaz surmised. I agree with him.

My long-haul truck driver friend Anil Pandeyji with 30 years of experience, prefers silence in the cabin. No radio, taped music, or speakers were mounted in his driver’s cabin. He prefers to drive solo. Such an arrangement suits his motormaliks also!

At the Institute, he stopped in front of a huge wall poster with more than 60 gadget pictures on the wall. They were the dials one notices in the passenger cars. I wager a bet that it would be hard to recognize the symbols and their meaning. If the driver cannot figure out the meaning, what action could they take? Pertinent question.

Today’s vehicles — passenger or freight carriers — have advanced onboard gadgets. So, where do we stand? How much do we know about these symbols? When was the last time one read the driving manual packed with the new gaddi? I never. Disinterested. Plus, such manuals were never reader-friendly.

One final word: If there is a test tomorrow on road signages, most of us will fail. Pity.