Last week’s hit-and-run incident in Mumbai, involving a BMW and its inebriated driver who mowed down a woman, yet again shows that more than three decades after the Indian economy was liberalised, a distinctive pattern of living, and dying, and killing has emerged. This pattern has been spawned by a class of citizens possessing enormous wealth to purchase luxury cars and sports utility vehicles, which pack ample power to allow their drivers to race at extraordinary speeds.

These hurricanes-on-wheels were conceived for highways with high or no speed limits, such as Germany’s autobahns, in the hope of shrinking space and time. But urban India crawls, imposing a natural constraint on speeding. Swanky cars and SUVs have values other than speed: these are undeniably comfortable to ride, and ostensibly bestow upon their owners a high social status.