A scene from a bus accident at Anchumoorthy Mangalam, near Vadakkenchery town, Palakkad, recently. Nine people were killed and 40 injured when a tourist bus carrying students rammed a Kerala State Road Transport Corporation bus. file photo MUSTAFAH KK
John L. Paul KOCHI
Danger lurks along National Highways 66 and 544 and other national highway corridors in the State, as these stretches contribute around one-third of the 4,000-odd accident fatalities each year.
This is apart from the over 40,000 severely-injured people, who suffer permanent disability each year following accidents.
The latest major accident in which nine bus passengers, including five school students, were killed on the national highway at Palakkad a week ago after a recklessly-driven tourist bus cruising at 98 kmph rammed the side of a Kerala State Road Transport Corporation superfast bus at midnight, once again focusses public attention on the issue of rashly and negligently driven contract carriages on highways.
Two-lane highways
A draft report submitted by the National Transportation Planning and Research Centre to the Kerala Road Safety Authority (KRSA) in May this year speaks of over 4,000 accident-prone black spots in the State road network, mainly on the congested but notoriously-narrow highways.
Most corridors on NH 66 and NH 544 remain confined to two-lane, having tarred carriageway narrower than 12-m width, with the remaining 18 metres acquired three decades ago on either side for a 30-m-wide highway network remaining weed-infested and heavily encroached upon.
National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) sources say almost the entire NH 544 has been widened as four or six lane, while work is under way to similarly widen the much-lengthier NH 66. Most other highway corridors still remain two-lane.
A deadly cocktail of faulty and myopic road engineering by the Public Works Department and the NHAI, slack enforcement by Motor Vehicles department and police personnel, dysfunctional surveillance cameras and speed radars (less than 40 of the 240 installed a decade ago are operational), encroachments, haphazard parking, absence of dedicated bus bays, inadequate sign boards and street lights, ill-maintained vehicles, scant regard to lane discipline, reckless overtaking, rash driving, and dozing off at the wheel have over the years resulted in the highway network turning into a killing field.
Faced with this predicament, the KRSA wrote to District Collectors, ex-officio chairperson of the respective District Road Safety Council, in August this year directing them to take measures to reduce road accident fatalities by at least 20% by the year-end from the figures recorded in the pre-COVID period when the State roads claimed over 4,000 lives per year. It had come down to 3,262 in 2021, thanks to the lower number of vehicles on the road due to the pandemic situation. Still, 912 of the 3,262 deaths were on the State’s highways.
Altogether, 330 road stretches in the State’s highway network had been identified by the authority as highly-accident prone, based on an analysis of accident data recorded between 2018 and 2020. It further directed the Collectors to form a task force consisting of officers from the Revenue department, PWD, traffic-rule enforcement agencies, and local bodies to conduct joint site visits to identify the cause(s) of accidents and the obstructions to smooth and safe flow of traffic on highways.
Road-owning agencies were directed to conduct a safety audit of the critical stretches and implement corrective measures. This was done to bring these stretches under 24x7 camera surveillance and keeping ready emergency medical support teams.
Ill-maintained highways
Road safety expert and Director of the Indian Institute of Road Safety Upendra Narayanan, who has been at the forefront of campaigns to ensure optimal use of highway width, spoke of how highway corridors that cater to approximately one lakh passenger car units daily and, hence, had to be widened as eight lane, have just two or four-lane width in most of Kerala.
“Sadly, even many highway corridors where the NHAI collects hefty toll are either ill-maintained or bereft of basic safety measures. This has caused a powder-keg-like situation across the State, what with passenger vehicles, goods carriers, cyclists, and pedestrians having to jostle for space on highways. It has also prompted motorists to engage in risky overtaking.”
“The undue delay in operationalising artificial intelligence-enabled and other surveillance cameras on highways must be compensated for by intercepting vehicles that are rashly driven and found wanting in safety norms. This is crucial since Kerala’s highways, which form a minuscule portion of the State’s total road length, are many times more vulnerable to accidents than other roads. Sadly, enforcement personnel are most often scared of initiating action against goods carriers and buses since their operators are highly organised,” says Mr. Narayanan.
An office-bearer of a private bus operators’ body confides how rashly-driven tourist and private buses have a free run, especially on the Thrissur-Palakkad- Thalassery NH corridor, thanks to slack enforcement. “Personnel of the MVD and the highway patrol must act in tandem to curb this, rather than act in a standalone manner.”
All this is apart from the havoc created by overloaded goods carriers that pose danger to road users, apart from reducing the life of the road surface.
President of the All Kerala Truck Owners’ Association Anoop K.A., who recently wrote to the Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau seeking its attention to the police and MVD personnel allegedly turning a blind eye to goods carriers operating along highways carrying double the permitted load, says such inaction has been taking a heavy toll in the form of accidents they cause. The association has also filed a contempt of court petition before the Kerala High Court citing non-adherence by the personnel of court orders regarding overloading.
Pedestrians vulnerable
A high-ranking traffic police officer spoke of the innumerable hassles in enforcing lane discipline and safety rules on the highways, since they are flanked by densely-populated commercial and residential areas. “Unlike in other countries, motorists show scant regard for pedestrians, who are often forced to jaywalk on highways due to inadequate pedestrian lines and foot overbridges.”
“The police have registered 30 lakh petty cases so far this year for traffic-rule violations. This means, about one-fifth of the total number of 1.60 crore vehicles have been fined so far for one offence or another. With petty cases being of little effect in reducing accidents, the police are making efforts to install around 1,000 more surveillance cameras, mainly on highways. This mode of digital policing is being seen as a more effective deterrent, which will in turn help change the driving culture,” he says.
Enforcement agencies are also gearing up for strict observance of speed norms with the help of feedback from vehicle location tracking device (VLTD) installed in about 2.50 lakh of the total 8.30 lakh public transport vehicles.
Highly-accident-prone corridors on the highways have been ranked on the basis of the number of fatal accidents recorded there, say KRSA sources. Speed-calming and other measures will be readied there, while students from the National Cadet Corps and the Student Police Cadet cadre will be roped in to remove advertisement boards and other distractions from these areas. This will be followed by clear demarcation of the road and its edges for better visibility, they say.
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