Lights, Cycle, Action!

On a foggy December night, Kailashnath Tiwari, 79, who was cycling back home from work in Aminabad (near Lucknow), late in the evening, met his end when a car rammed into his cycle. He died on the spot. “The accident happened because of dense fog; there was barely any visibility that night,” recalls his granddaughter, Khushi Pandey, 22, a final year student of Law. Wasn’t the driver of the car to blame who ran into him, weren’t the car’s headlights working? “It was pitch dark and frankly, I doubt whether he could’ve guessed that there would be somebody on a cycle ahead of him on the road, that night, the fog was really bad. What was really unfortunate was that my grandfather’s cycle did not have a light or even reflectors” says Pandey. The gnawing feeling that maybe her grandfather would still be amidst them if only his cycle had a light or reflectors spurred Pandey into action.  Pandey made a few inquiries and it didn’t take her long to find out that that cycles do not come with factory-fitted lights and, that in fact, they have to be purchased as an additional accessory. And that is when Pandey decided