Off-roading enthusiasts press 4WD vehicles into pulling stranded vehicles, people to dry ground
The Hindu
A free service, it follows a localised approach by enabling people from various localities to seek help from off-roaders assigned for them. Helplines are found below
Off-roading enthusiasts find firm ground where none exists. They find it inching up inclines. They find it plunging into pits. And they also find it wading into waters. With torque in all four wheels, their 4WD machines unbox the first two experiences for them. Snorkels turn 4WDs into something of a dabbling duck and offer the experience of “water crossing”, a hallowed chapter in any play-book for off-roaders. With a storm set to cross the coast near Chennai later today (November 11) and continual rains since Sunday (November 7), off-roading enthusiasts are thumbing through this chapter, ironically “on-road” at GN Chetty Road, North Crescent Road, Sixth Main Road (RA Puram) and Jawahar Nagar (Perambur), to name a few.
On November 7, the night of November 10 and now through this day (November 11), a handful of off-roaders are neck-deep in efforts to winch out vehicles stranded in rainwater-soaked roads.
“On November 7, we would have totally pulled out nine cars,” notes Arkaprava Datta of Terra Tigers Jeep Thrills (TTJT) which has put out “helplines” to address this often-ignored category of monsoon distress. These are temporary helplines (listed at the end of these article) that will go silent when the last raindrop from the monsoon falls on Chennai soil. “It is a free service we would be offering through the monsoon,” notes Arkaprava, adding that TTJT has been rendering this free service every monsoon since the 2015 floods and 2016 cyclone, but has become more efficient in orchestrating it.