Bad roads break this family's backbone

BANGALORE: A widowed mother working as a cook. A widowed sister with a son of 11 months. Two nieces, aged 16 and 18 years, daughters of a sister who died a few years ago. A sister who works as a maid. And a wife and son aged three. That''s quite a load to carry on your shoulders. Shridhar (25) worked as a driver and brought home the bacon. But the city had other plans.For, in addition to IT, Bangalore specialises in bad roads, terribly designed speed breakers and poor street lighting. Shridhar, who would successfully have negotiated a few thousand speed breakers driving a car, didn''t see the monstrous double near the Bharatinagar police station on February 6 while returning home after work. Shridhar was thrown off his Kinetic Honda and landed with a thud. He was almost dead. Today, at K.R. Hospital doctors say he may survive. They are, however, not willing to hazard a guess about his long-term neurological condition. He suffered head injuries, multiple fractures and left lung contusion. Another case of Bangalore''s speed breakers doing more damage than actually serving any good. Nothing new. Doctors dealing with accident-related cases say two-wheeler accidents are mostly because of overspeeding, poor roads and speed breakers, bad lighting and stray animals dashing across. Speed breakers are all over the place: No warning signs, no striped marks, no uniformity in height, width or even the slope. So if one resembles a table top mountain, another would be akin to a Himalayan cliff. As for Shridhar, he is still in the ICU of K.R. Hospital. The expenses have climbed to a whopping Rs 1.5 lakh. A family surrounded by death is relieved that another one did not join the list at such a young age. But that isn''t saying much.