A routine ride on a two-wheeler 15-years ago and a serious knee injury crashed the dreams of a budding footballer, yet it prompted him to think of a road safety campaign.
It was in the evening of 2005, when Praveen Singh, a native of Bhopal, then studying BBA at Amravati University in Amravati city of Maharashtra, met with an accident after his bike skid on the road.
“I recovered after three months bed rest but was forced to quit playing soccer. I was lucky to escape with an injury but it made me ponder over the road safety measures and how people are losing lives because of small mistakes,” said the 37-year-old Praveen Singh, working with a BPO in Chindwara in Madhya Pradesh.
He is now on a bike expedition of central-west-south India covering 9,000 km.
Riding an ‘Avenger 220 Cruise’ bike and accompanied by his colleague Javed Pathan, Mr. Singh set out on his expedition to spread the message of road safety.
“My slogan is ‘Ride safe, stay safe’. I took up this campaign seeing so many fatal accidents, which are in fact avoidable,” he said, during an interaction on National Highway-44 near Kurnool.
The bike enthusiast began his campaign from Chindwara on December 1 -- passing through Gondia (Madhya Pradesh), Jagadalpur (Chhattisgarh), Rayagada (Odisha), Visakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh), Puducherry, Chennai, Madurai, Rameswaram, Dhanushkodi and Kanyakumari (Tamil Nadu) in first leg covering 3,900 km. in nine days.
“Our campaign was spontaneous. Like when we were travelling towards Dhanushkodi, we saw motorists overtaking from the left side. We stopped at traffic signals and told them how dangerous it was to overtake from a wrong side. Our message is that - there is no retake in life if you try to overtake from the wrong side,” Mr. Singh reasoned.
During the 2,500 km second leg of ride from Kanyakumari to Bengaluru via Kovalam, Thiruvananthapuram, Alleppey, Munnar (Kerala), Coimbatore, Nilgiris, Mudumalai (Tamilnadu), Bandipur, Coorg, Mysuru and Bengaluru, they saw motorists recklessly parking their vehicles in ‘no parking’ zones on the ghat roads. “We stopped by the road side and pointed out to them how their casual approach was endangering the lives of other road users,” he said.
In the third and final leg of their ride from Bengaluru and back to Chindwara, the duo plan to travel to Hyderabad, Nashik, Aurangabad and Bhopal and conclude the trip by December 25.
This is the second solo ride for Mr. Singh after his successful maiden ride of 18-days from Chandigarh to Laddakh in 2012 -- covering 4,100 km.
“We had done local rides covering 500 -1,000 km., and now plan to go on a bike expedition covering the Golden Quadrilateral sometime next year,” signs off Mr. Singh, revving his bike for continuing his highway ride.
