A Highway accident and can technology help build humane processes?
TL;DR version: Some thoughts and rants after personally experiencing a near-major road accident.
It was getting late. We had left home a little late and I thought we could reach the bus stop faster on foot. My judgement was a bit off. I had usually traveled this route in a vehicle. But on foot it seemed taking for ever. Or was it Relativity at play as the clock seemed to move faster than usual. We were at least 10 minutes away but the bus had to depart in 5. Then the driver called and we requested him to wait and he obliged. My luck with buses trains and once on a domestic flight are always like this and I tend to reach on the dot or slightly behind. We made it and started settling in the last but one row seat which I had booked.
Our problems didn’t end there. The window seat’s push back hydraulics didn’t work. The bus got stuck in a huge jam. And when everything was settled and the bus started on its way to our destination, the overhead speakers started blaring. The bus crew had chosen to play a movie. As much as I tried to sleep, I couldn’t do it. Instead I started watching the movie hoping that its boring story line would lull me to sleep. It only got interesting and kept me awake. The lights of the LED TV went out at about 1.30 AM and the sandman seemed to do his work for the night.
I must have dozed for a couple of hours and suddenly there was a huge scream by someone in front (later I got to know that it was the driver). In milliseconds I became alert (must have been that flight/fight brains inherited from my ancestors hunting in Savannah grasslands). The bus had hit something. Sparks flew. The bus jumped lanes. The glass window next to me shattered. Some of us were thrown out of our seats. My wife, in the aisle seat held me tightly to prevent me from falling out and I ducked and held my arm between my face and the seat in front. In that moment I feared that the bus would topple. Thankfully it didn’t and went and banged a light pole and finally came to a halt against a wall.
Everyone in the bus was scared. They were scrambling for their phones, putting on the torch and checking themselves and their neighbors. A sigh of relief passed as nothing major had happened to anyone except a few bruises. Someone alerted the National Highway Authority and the ambulance came quickly. Two elderly people who seemed to be in shock were taken to hospital for a checkup. Later we found that a truck in front had suddenly changed lanes resulting in an evasive action from our bus driver. The bus did hit the truck before it veered off and hit the wall. Thankfully for us the brakes, light pole and the wall bore the impact of the crash. Beyond the wall was a 20 foot fall. As I washed my face to clear all the silicon dust from the broken window, I started asking some people around if they were alright. They seemed so. After about an hour, we waved down another bus and boarded it to continue the journey. This time we didn’t catch a wink and lay there thanking our stars.
On reaching our destination about 5 hours later, we got a call from the travel operator. A lady spoke in soft voice that she was calling to gather feedback from our journey. Anger flared up as I thought, ‘how insensitive’. But then I paused for a second, recomposed myself and then narrated to her about the bus accident. Now it was the lady’s turn to pause. She didn’t know how to respond. This seemed off-script which she hadnt been trained for. I broke the silence and assured her that nothing happened to us and she should call the others and check about them. She was still in shock and meekly told she would and we ended the call.
After the call, I wasn’t sure how information travelled through this bus operating company. It must still be manually transmitted through people. Besides this got me thinking about the automated processes we as technology folks build in through our products. The task of feedback call would have been scheduled well in advance. A feedback mail could have been triggered at the scheduled arrival time of the bus at the destination too. Wouldn’t it seem a little insensitive to have put in such an automated process for rare instances like this? Could technology do better? Had the Bus GPS tracker been integrated with the Interaction center application that the company might be using such things could have been ironed out by an informed caller.
And I was hard at myself to not have checked with every single traveller about their wellbeing and probably should have taken their contact too, just to check on them as a concerned fellow traveller to also get in touch with them in future (if need be to approach authorities as a group). Missed it!
And by the way, For the first time, I had bravely booked a new private bus operator. Booked tickets on the right side seat as these were the only ones available. Exchanged my aisle seat with my wife’s window seat as her seat hydraulic didn’t work. Bought a bus travel insurance. We must have been really lucky to have come out unscathed from such an incident. Wish I could say that about the bus. It would probably need the front body to be entirely rebuilt and I hope it was well insured.
