Round Table India, a social organisation, will organise a Blind Man Car Rally here on February 11. The rally would start at NSCI Club, Worli and culminate after covering a distance of about 30 km to 40 km while discovering several places around the city.
The Blind Man Car Rally is a national initiative of Round Table India. It was also hosted in more than 20 cities across India on the same date. The funds raised and saved through this is to the last penny used to build schools for underprivileged children.
The event itself boosts tremendous confidence among the blind pilots (visually impaired) & participants. The initiative has had celebrities and personalities like Ajay Devgan, Asin, Dilip Vengsarkar, Mahesh Manjrekar, Aditya Thackeray, Prahlad Kakkar, Shaina NC, Mukesh Khanna, Anand Shivamani, Amruta Fadnavis etc. to flag off the rally in the past.
Unlike a race, this rally is a complex sport wherein one car is flagged off every minute. It requires skills, precisely acute sense of direction, controlled driving skills, good reflexes, coordination of skills such as listening, calculating, visualising and of course, driving.
The event is essentially time-speed-distance (TSD) road rally where each one of the teams consisting of a minimum of two persons (driver and navigator) would be given a set of route directions to follow and the speeds at which they should travel. In the blind man’s car rally in an exceptional situation, the sighted driver is totally dependent on the blind navigator to make his way through the course, said Anant Desai of Belgaum Royals Round Table here on Tuesday.
It is an initiative to help develop a close emotional bond with blind persons, to support and boost self-confidence in them.