You Gotta Be Kidding!

Dear Mumbai Police,

For being one of the most efficient law enforcement agencies of the nation, this has got to be the silliest move ever- banning music in the motor vehicles. This has probably got to be the most Tughlaq-sque move. And why? To avoid accidents? How is banning music going to prevent accidents? Of course, unless, you are keeping a watch on the decibel levels. If that is the case then yeah, it will work. How else are you expecting the car driver to commute on Mumbai roads and preserving his sanity at the same time? If you want to avoid accidents on the roads, here are a few things you might want to look at:

• Check the decibel levels of the music. How will you know if the music is too loud for your liking? Dude, if you can hear the music outside the car and are able to match your heartbeat (or skip your heartbeat) with it, it is loud. Slow soothing music is not a problem to the car driver or the car passing next to it.
  
• Improve the roads so that you can reduce the time a vehicle spends on the road because of a jam and that way reduce - if not avoid - the accidents.
• Continue your stringent drive to check drunken driving. Good job there. Keep up with it. Make it more strict if you can.
• Be a little more sensitive to the accident victims even if they are not injured. Help the victims anyway you can, and you might just end up increasing the goodwill for the police department. Trust me, it goes a long way.
  

Do you realise what will be the result of banning radio/other music from playing in the vehicles?

• Cutting off of the road-travelling public from the goings-on of the city. Today radio is the most effective medium in transmitting messages about road blocks due to traffic jams, water logging, political rallies and all that jazz. Banning the radio is going to increase the problems and finally result in your move backfiring.
• Would you rather have people driving their cars with the earplugs on? Because, if you ban stereos, people will be people and they will find a loophole around it. Maybe not the brightest loophole, but a loophole nonetheless. People are going to think, "I am not allowed to play loudly? Fine, I'll just play it on my cellphone and plug it in my ears. That way, the police won't know. Not to worry, it is not going to bother my driving." Isn't that worse that the car stereo playing? At least, you can control the volume of the car stereo. Whereas you are not going to be able to control the volume of the radio that is playing inside the driver's ear and that might just block out all the traffic from his hearing. Would you rather have that?

Think about it.

Sincerely yours,
Concerned Citizen of Mumbai