Fast foods, fast automobiles, fast life, fast this, fast that and also fast communication by data transformation are the order of the day. Even Mysuru is witnessing its residents indulging in and enjoying all the above fast features in their daily life to apparently erase their profile marked by slowness of life that has endured for long until not too long ago. The city’s senior citizens seem to be dumb founded at the change of pace, getting virtually lost in the march of progress that the gen next firmly believes in. The plight of the oldies in the overpopulated metropolises hosting automobile-dependent residents, unfazed by the dust, noise and emissions that they are generating at levels beyond tolerable limits, unable to slow down in the aforementioned features, cannot be over-exaggerated. While fast life is fascinating the youth no end, the issue of which out of fast foods and fast automobiles are killing them is anybody’s guess.

Sounding caution in the matter of consuming foods that don’t visibly upset one’s health has come to be scoffed at. Wishing safe journey for travellers by air is well-taken. While it is still customary to wish safe journey to win commuting longish distances by road, either in public transport or personal automobiles, the incidents of their last road journey as it were has witnessed phenomenal rise in recent times.

Several measures have been already taken to ostensibly address the issues of safety of road-bound masses in their own vehicles or travelling in privately operated systems including taxis. These measures, relevant to both inter-city and intracity commuters, include signages indicating speed limits, humps, road-widening, one-way rule, barricades with luminous paint, halt-and-proceed regulation, avoiding haphazard parking and so on. As if to undo these and other pro-people steps, the authorities have not scored well in the matter of laying and maintaining vehicle-friendly roads, particularly wide and deep pits (pot holes), a major threat to the safety of two-wheelers of all types.

Continuing its vigil on and intervention in ensuring orderly public life, the country’s Apex Court has recently passed an order insisting all States and Union Territories to frame a Road Safety Policy covering issuance of Driving Licence, registration of vehicles, maintenance of road worthiness of all types of automobiles and so on. A related Bill on Road Transport and Safely is likely to be passed by the nation’s Parliament. One hopes that the number of incidents in which road users make their journey as the last one comes down drastically in foreseeable future.