There’s a tragic story about death in the Nepali roads. Many trucks — very heavy, with the driver sitting very high, namely the reaper (Nepali: yamraaj , Hindu God of Death)— carry goods up and down, but Nepalis who want to travel from between two places drive motorbikes — namely the mushrooms (Nepali: yartsa gunbu, a type of fungus parasite that grows in the worm’s brain killing it, then springing from earthy fields in Himalayan areas).
The combination of both vehicles in the road cause problems because the dangerous (reaper — called so by motorbikes) truck driver sits very high up and the motorbikes sprawl around it, springing randomly closer and further from the track without the reaper being fully aware. Thus the bikes are called mushrooms by the reapers, because, as mentioned, they randomly pop unexpectedly like the aforementioned yartsa gunbu.
| Yaamraj (Reaper) — Trucks | Yartsa Gumbu (Mushroom) — Motorbikes |
|---|---|
| The Hindu God of Death himself, taking souls. | A fungus parasite that grows in the worm brain and kills it |
 |  |
 |  |
The bikes calling the trucks “reaper” is not an exaggeration. It’s because even a little physical interaction with it might easily sentence you to death.
This is not only due to the difficulty for the truck drivers to acknowledge the bikes, which might lead the motorbike to easily be run over unwillingly by truck, falling underneath of it without the driver even knowing.
This is mainly because any small interaction that might you fall off the bike and produce little injury can be seen as a economical threat by the truck driver — since by lay would be liable to pay the treatment of the bike driver.
Therefore it’s very common for the reaper to reverse after the collision in order to crush the fallen motorbike driver to end his life. That saves him from having to pay long treatments for the injuries the worm receives, which can ruin one’s economy.
Officially one must pay Rs 50,000 (around $5,000) to the family of the deceased, and spend some time in jail (less than a month I remember hearing). But there’s even a reaper association that would cover the cost if you are a truck driver — they kind of lobby together to prevent their drivers having to pay expensive medical treatments for the injured person.
One Nepali friend explained me this after his uncle a bike driver mushroom, after being hit by a reaper, the pedestrians around him quickly reacted to pull him out of the road before the reaper crushed him by reversing.