Fast, Furious & Disastrous! High Speed Test Drive on a 70 Lakh Range Rover turns Fatal- the deceased person is driver of the car, Sagar Jayaram, an interior decorator, was a resident of Girinagar, Bengaluru.
Mangaluru: This accident reminds me of 2001 Universal Pictures, the series of the film titled “The Fast and the Furious”- which has been followed by seven sequels, two short films that tie into the series, and as of May 2017, it has become Universal’s biggest franchise of all time, currently the eighth-highest-grossing film series of all time with a combined gross of over $5 billion. The film highlights the illegal street racing, heists and espionage, and includes material in various other media that depicts characters and situations from the films.
But the tragic and fatal accident that took place yesterday in Bengaluru, where a man was test driving a Rs 60-70 lakh Range Rover SUV, driving at a speed of 150-160 kmph lost his life. This incident was not only “Fast and Furious”, but was “Disastrous” too. An accident during a high-speed test drive of a Rs 65-lakh Range Rover Evoque claimed the life of a 31-year-old businessman and left his wife with a fractured spine. The deceased, Sagar Jayaram, an interior decorator, was a resident of Girinagar. Sagar’s wife Sandhya (27) sustained a fracture in her spine and is admitted to the BGS Global Hospital off Uttarahalli Main Road near Kengeri. Sagar’s son Samarth (6), and his friend and business partner Gowtham, and the demo driver Shivakumar escaped unhurt in the accident near Hoskerehalli toll booth on NICE Road, in West Bengaluru on Tuesday, 26 March 2019 at 3 pm.
The Evoque was a demo car and was running a test drive reportedly involving 4 passengers and also evident since all the airbags had been off. It is learnt that the Range Rover was reportedly doing high speeds over a 150 kmph by the locals and the driver seemed to have lost control of the car after a tyre burst on the right front of the car. You can see (in the video) the Aluminum Alloy scrape marks on the road and pieces of the tyre spread all around this scrape curve on the road in the images. The car’s right end then crashed on to the concrete barriers before the toll booth and went airborne on one side then the front left seemed to have crashed into the railings which then left the car jumping off the road to an empty ground where it came to a halt. The damages as seen from the images are beyond repair and the Range Rover Evoque is a total loss.
Sources reveal that Sagar had planned to buy a Range Rover and had booked a trial drive on Tuesday from a Jaguar showroom in Rupena Agrahara on Hosur Road. The five of them, including demo driver Shivakumar, took the NICE Road for the demo and were headed towards their home in Girinagar around 2.35 pm. “It happened in a couple of seconds,” said a toll booth staffer. The car was travelling at a speed of at least 150 to 180 kmph. It looked like the driver lost control and avoided hitting the toll booths, the police said. There were no tyre marks on the road to indicate braking, said a police officer at the spot. The car initially hit one of the extreme left dividers meant to segregate vehicles. It then hit the guard rails, and ploughed through a fence and fell 10 to 12 metres down an embankment.
The toll booth staff and other motorists rushed to the victims’ help and tried to extricate them from the car fearing it could catch fire. The police rushed to the spot and shifted the victims to BGS Global Hospital. Prima facie it looks like Sagar was driving the car with the demo driver Shivakumar in the passenger’s seat. The car flipped over several times and Sagar was found bleeding from his face and ears. The driver and the co-passenger were wearing seat belts and the air-bags deployed. Sagar was declared brought dead at the hospital after which his body was shifted to Victoria Hospital for postmortem. Sagar’s sister, who is abroad, is on her way to Bengaluru after she was informed of the accident, the police said. The Byatrayanapura traffic police have registered a case and are investigating.
Regarding, The Range Rover Evoque is powered by a 2.0 litre 4 cylinder diesel or a 2.0 litre 4 cylinder petrol each producing 177 bhp and 237 bhp respectively. It boasts an acceleration to 100 kmph in under 9 seconds.
Inputs from DH
Sad, the over-confidence of the person driving got the better of him. Man or machine, out of control, is very risky