The police are struggling to reconstruct the road accident that resulted in the death of the scion of a wealthy business family in the city late on Wednesday.
The high-speed collision also injured three co-passengers and an autorickshaw driver. The accident occurred in front of the ministerial Manmohan Bungalow on the well-paved Vellayambalam-Kawdiar thoroughfare.
The car veered off the carriage way, ploughed through electric posts, shaved the bark of avenue trees on the sidewalk and tore up a post box before coming to a halt. The sound of the collision alerted night watchmen.
The absence of visuals of the actual crash has impeded efforts of the investigators. Many questions remain on what caused the accident. The police said the autorickshaw that chanced on to the path of the speeding brand new sports car could have blindsided its driver, causing him to lose control. Impromptu late-night street racing could also be a reason.
What the police know for sure is that the accident occurred minutes after the youth and his three friends drove out of a five-star hotel. The youth was on his way to drop two of his friends at their home. The accident occurred when he attempted to overtake another car driven by his companions.
City Police Commissioner P. Prakash told The Hindu that he had found no evidence to suggest that the driver had accepted a challenge to race. IG Manoj Abraham said the youth was unfamiliar with his new car. He could have stepped on the accelerator pedal mistaking it for the brake.
The police are sifting through gigabytes of grainy video output from surveillance cameras in the locality to reconstruct the accident.
No surveillance cameras
Surprisingly, they have no surveillance cameras on the stretch where spontaneous street racing-related accidents have occurred in the past years.
A spate of deaths on the arterial road has been attributed to street racing, an activity involving well-heeled youth ready to race for a dare.
Hollywood films that glamorised high-risk road racing seemed to have inspired the thrill seekers.
The police have a network of 258 cameras in the city. However, most are relatively cheap rugged surveillance cameras.
They are not designed to capture the registration plates of vehicles that break the legal speed limits or commit other violations.
