I did not know the people involved in the accident. Until a few hours earlier, I did not even know that an accident had happened.

While visiting the market, I took an auto-rickshaw. Three elderly women were already travelling in it, and they were talking about an accident that had happened at around 2:00 a.m. I did not know anything about it, so I just listened.

From what they were saying, several young people had been in a four-wheeler. Some were talking about the speed of the car. Someone suggested that the driver might have been drinking. I also heard that one of those who died was the daughter of a local political figure.

A few minutes later, the auto passed the place where the accident had occurred. The conversation inside the vehicle stopped almost immediately. Everyone looked towards the site.

Several hours had passed, but the damage was still there. A concrete barrier beside the road had been broken and pushed away from its original position. The driver told us that the car had been badly crushed in the impact. Until then, the accident had been a story being discussed. Seeing the damaged barrier made the accident feel real in a way that the conversation inside the car had not.

I looked at the damaged barrier and wondered what those few seconds must have been like when the car went out of control.

The women said there had been four people in the car, but nobody seemed sure about exactly how many had died. One of them again said that one of the victims was the daughter of a local political figure and had died at the scene.

The three women did not appear to know one another, yet they were reaching broadly similar conclusions. They spoke about young people driving too fast, taking risks and not thinking enough about the consequences. They also started talking about parents and whether parents today know enough about what their children are doing when they are out late at night.

A few kilometres later, I stopped to buy fruit. The fruit seller was talking about the same accident. He was wondering how fast a car would have to be travelling, or how much force would be involved, for a concrete barrier to end up like that.

People who had not been at the scene were already discussing what had happened and why. By then, I realised how quickly the incident had travelled through the local area, with people already forming their own explanations of what had happened.

When I got home, I told my family what I had heard. One of the names mentioned in connection with the accident sounded familiar through my extended family connections, so I decided to check what had actually happened.

I searched for local reports and found one in Bartaman Patrika. The first local report I found, published by Bartaman Patrika, identified the deceased young woman as Shibanya Sarkar and reported that she was the daughter of Rajendra Sonkar, a former councillor of Ward 2 of Titagarh Municipality. It reported that the car had been travelling at high speed, lost control, hit a divider and overturned several times. It said there had been four occupants, with one death and three injured.

Two days later, I searched again for updates on the accident I had heard about that morning near Titagarh. The reports published in the following days changed important parts of the first account. Later reports named the deceased as Gungun Sonkar, 21, while “Shivanya” was reported as the name by which she was known on social media. More importantly, the accident had not claimed one life, as the first report had suggested. Sujit Gupta, one of the injured occupants, later died after being taken to hospital. The story I had first heard in the auto, the first report I found, and the later account were not identical. The incident had travelled quickly, but the facts had not necessarily travelled with it.

In Jamshedpur, four teenagers aged 17 to 18 were reported to have been killed after their car crashed into a stationary truck at around 3:30 in the morning. Reports said they had left a friend's flat after a group study session and were travelling towards Marine Drive. One of the victims was reported to be the daughter of Jharkhand minister Deepika Pandey Singh.

I then came across a few other recent reports involving young people travelling in cars late at night or in the early hours of the morning. Near Bengaluru, six students died in a crash around 4:30–4:45 a.m.; police said that the vehicle was allegedly being driven by a 17-year-old. 

As I searched further, I began encountering more reports of young people travelling together late at night or in the early hours of the morning: students returning from classes or study sessions, friends going out, people coming back from celebrations, or a group simply travelling home after spending time together.

I was not trying to find one explanation for all these accidents. But reading them together made me think about how ordinary a journey can seem before something goes wrong.

I probably noticed it more because I have seen what one of these journeys can do to people I actually knew.

A few years ago, two of my old school friends went on a late-night car trip in Delhi with some other friends to get something to eat.

Fortunately, everyone survived. But survival did not mean that everyone simply walked away from it. Most were badly injured. One of them lost vision in one eye, and the physical effects of the accident continued long after the journey itself had ended.

These were not people whose names I read in a newspaper. They were people I had studied with and known from my school days.

So when I read about these recent crashes, I could not look at them only as news reports.

I kept thinking about something else: before the accident happened, did anyone have a chance to recognise the risk?

I started thinking about what happens before people even get into the car, not just what happens after it crashes.

Do we ask enough about a driver's experience and physical and mental condition before getting into a car with several friends or passengers?

Who gives a teenager access to a car?

How seriously do families and groups treat late-night driving or sudden avoidable trips?

What do friends or passengers do when they notice that someone is driving too fast or inappropriately?

These questions do not blame young people or their parents. They also do not mean that every accident involving young people is caused by reckless driving.

The number of people dying on Indian roads also reminded me that this is much bigger than the accidents I had been reading about. According to the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, 183,382 people died in road crashes in India in 2025. That number does not tell us how many young drivers, young passengers or people travelling late at night were involved. It tells us something more basic: road crashes continue to take an enormous number of lives.

These questions may seem simple, but they matter because some decisions can still be reconsidered before a journey begins. A sudden late-night plan does not have to mean accepting every associated risk simply because the decision was made casually. The driver's experience, age, physical and mental condition, tiredness, the number of passengers, the condition of the vehicle and the road, and the possibility of alcohol or other risks are all things that can be considered before the car starts moving.

My grandmother used to warn us against travelling late at night because of the risks that could arise on the road. At the time, it sounded like the kind of practical warning older people often give. Looking at these incidents now, I understand that such advice was not necessarily about fear; it was about considering a risk before it became a problem.

The three women in the auto seemed to me to go too far when they turned the accident into a judgement about the quality of parenting today. Parents cannot control every decision their children make. But that does not mean parents, drivers and friends have no role in questioning a risky plan before it begins.

Sometimes the reason to avoid a journey is much stronger before an accident than it will ever be afterwards. Once someone has been injured or killed, there may be explanations, investigations and arguments about what went wrong. Before the journey, however, there is still a chance to stop and ask whether the journey needs to happen in that way at all.

When I first passed that accident site, all I really saw was a broken concrete barrier. By the time I reached home, I had started thinking about what lay behind that barrier—the people involved, the information surrounding the accident, and the risks that might exist before a journey begins.

The road will eventually be repaired. Traffic will continue to move through that place. New passengers will sit in autos, buses and cars without knowing what happened there that night.

But for the family of the person who died, there will be no return to the way things were before that journey began.

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