City’s biking community clarifies
Sir,
On behalf of the biking community of Mysuru, I would like to voice our opinion on the unfortunate issue reported in Star of Mysore dated July 6, 2025 (Death Track: Late-night racing claims two lives).
Our hearts go out to the souls lost in the unfortunate incident, and we openly detest motor vehicles being driven/ridden at high speeds, which is extremely unsafe and took a toll during the incident, which occurred in the wee hours. While the critics, residents and Police have misinformation about the said incident, here are some facts:
1. There was no illegal (street) racing taking place. Racing occurs when there are two or more vehicles involved. This was a single vehicle involved in the incident, with no trace of any other high-end motor vehicle around during the time of the incident.
2. There was no stunting of any sort taking place.
If anyone has any first-hand information or proof of the same, this is a request to bring forward any such information towards stunting, wheeling or racing with other bikes, in this particular incident, before blatantly blaming the rider.
We request that the authorities and residents refrain from false claims and defaming the biker who lost his life, based on these untrue statements.
The biker involved in the particular instance has no connection to any particular super bike community of Mysuru. He was an out-of-town visitor who was in city for some personal commitments. This incident shouldn’t be used as a motive to go after the majority of us super bike riders who put safety before speed and ride sensibly.
As a biking community, we believe that each life is important and would plead with every motorist to follow the rules and drive/ride safely and not endanger lives on the road.
However, no one questions the Departments when the roads are filled with potholes and unscientific speed breakers. After taxing these high-end vehicles with lakhs of rupees in road tax, are we proud enough to boast roads of such standards?
If the Department and the residents of the country feel that such high-end vehicles are a menace to Indian roads, why don’t they ban their production, import and sale in India?
The Departments are only interested in minting money in every way possible and seizing vehicles from out of State and recovering road tax from them, but are not interested in providing safe, comfortable and motorable roads to ride and drive them on.
If they really care, give us good roads or stop the sales of such high-end vehicles in India, rather than targeting people for spending their hard-earned money on high-performance vehicles.
While we believe that peace and safety is important, we plead with the residents and the Departments not to target the communities at random due to the mistakes and recklessness of a few people.
Please remember that we are also someone’s son, someone’s husband, someone’s father and someone’s brother.
We also have families who wait for us back at home and while most of us remember that we have responsibilities, we shouldn’t be blamed as a whole, due to an occasional rash incident on our roads, more often than not due to the mistakes of other road users.
—An avid biker, Mysuru, 7.7.2025
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This post was published on July 10, 2025 5:55 pm