Sidestand Indicators

All two wheelers in India have a side stand which can be used for parking the vehicle temporarily. Motorists mainly use it when they want to buy something from a road side shop, or attending their mobile phones.

In some situations I find that people do not disengage the stand and start riding with the side stand still on. This can be dangerous sometimes if they want to take a left turn. The stand will hit the ground first and if the stand does nor retract the rider will not be able turn left. There are all possibilities that the rider may lose balance and fall.

I had a similar experience on top of the flyover in TTK Road. Myself and my friend were going then. We had to turn left and the side stand was on. We heard a terrible rattling noise and by the time we realised it we were very close to the parapet wall of the bridge. Luckily by then the stand had retracted and we managed unscathed.

Nowadays some two wheelers have side stand indicators in the instrument panels but the regular 100cc vehicles have none.

From then on I make it a point to indicate riders who have not disengaged their sidestands. It is easy if the rider is travelling in the same direction as I am. I either speed up or slow down until I come side by side to the rider and scream to him. Even this is hard sometimes because of other noises on the road.

But if the rider is coming towards me from the opposite direction, how do I tell him. We cross each other in milliseconds and before I realise he is gone. Do we have any hand signals for "side stand on".

We have a popular hand signal for "headlights on" which became even popular after Parthiban's movie. I thought may be this would be a good one.



What say all???