India woke up to the news of yet another deadly accident on Saturday — this time in Maharashtra’s Nashik in which 11 people were killed after their bus hit a truck early morning and caught fire in a few minutes. Just three days ago, a bus carrying a wedding party fell into a 500-metre deep gorge in Uttarakhand’s Pauri Garhwal district, killing 33 people. Switch on your TV set or flip through the day’s newspaper and you will find reports of numerous such accidents, sometimes tucked away on the last page as well as public memory.
Road safety has earned a dubious distinction in India, with more than 1,00,000 people dying each year in crashes due to poor driving and dilapidated roads. Buses, one of the most popular and economical modes of transport, too have been victims of apathy as operators often flout safety rules and stuff people in beyond the vehicle’s capacity. Overworked and under-rested drivers, negligence and a rush to beat a competing bus for passengers have been some of the most common causes of bus accidents in India. So, why has the country and the authorities not woken up to this evil yet?
What numbers say
According to the 2021 data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), as many as 1,55,622 lakh people lost their lives and 3,71,884 persons were injured in 4,03,116 road accidents in India. Road accident cases in the country have increased from 3,54,796 in 2020 to 4,03,116 in 2021, the report added.
The maximum increase in number of traffic accident cases in states from 2020 to 2021 was reported in Tamil Nadu (from 46,443 to 57,090) followed by Madhya Pradesh (from 43,360 to 49,493), Uttar Pradesh (from 30,593 to 36,509), Maharashtra (from 24,908 to 30,086) and Kerala ( from 27,998 to 33,051).
NCRB data from 2021 had revealed that as many as 2,951 people died in bus accidents across Karnataka between 2016 and 2020, with overspeeding and ferrying more passengers than the stipulated capacity being the prime reasons.
“Karnataka is among the top-five states which record the maximum bus accidents in the country. Other states are Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Kerala, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh,” a senior official at the ministry of road transport and highways had then told the Times of India. Aside from driver’s behaviour/fault — speeding, fatigue and alcohol, reasons such as overloading, steep road gradients/curves, poorly designed speed breakers, potholes, dysfunctional streetlights, lack of signage and poor condition of buses (brake failure, short circuit, tyre burst, broken floor etc.) also cause accidents.
Reports from Pune this year painted a similar picture. At least 95 accidents involving Pune Mahanagar Parivahan Mahamandal Limited (PMPML) were reported from April 2021 to June 2022, in which 22 people have lost their lives, as per the public transport body data.
In 2017, nearly 29 people died daily in road accidents involving buses, with Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala topping the list. Almost 86 per cent of those killed were bus passengers themselves, according to the government’s own data.
Roads must share the blame
In 2019, 44 people were killed when a bus, while navigating a sharp bend, skidded off the road in Kullu. There were no crash barriers at the site and the road was also in a bad condition. A year before that, an overloaded private bus going from Pauri to Nainital fell into a gorge, killing 48 people. Many survivors said the incident occurred after the driver tried to avoid a large pothole but lost control of the vehicle.
The first instinct when a bus accident occurs is to blame the driver — after all, he was behind the wheel and responsible for the safety of his passengers. However, experts say while overworked, drunk, drugged or sleep-deprived drivers can’t be let off the hook, bad roads and enforcement of rules too play a critical role in ensuring road safety.
The Times of India reported that in 2018, a non-profit body — the Institute of Road Traffic Education (IRTE) — conducted a probe into a bus accident in Himachal’s Kangra in which 24 children had died. Expert Rohit Baluja, who headed the investigation, said while the driver was responsible, “the road environment which includes road engineering and signage did not meet required standards for safe operation”.
A similar issue was revealed during a probe by the state police into a bus accident that killed 60 people in Telangana’s Kondagattu in 2018. “The primary reason was overloading. But we also found that the gradient of the road was too steep and there were chances that brakes wouldn’t work. There were poorly designed speedbreakers that could contribute to the driver losing control,” Krishna Prasad T, Telangana’s DGP in charge of road safety, had said.
The problem is more compound in hilly terrains where the topography adds to the driver’s challenge. Multiple sharp bends, potholes, boulders, missing signages and no check on speed make the journey risky but even over the years, there have been negligible efforts to plug these gaps.
What can be done?
There have been demands to make scientific probe of fatal accidents mandatory, there has been no movement in the direction. In 2018, the government had announced a sum of Rs 11,000 crore to fix the most accident-prone areas across the country but the amount seems too paltry for a country as vast as India.
There is also a need to cut competition among drivers and forgo market pressure that forces exhausted chauffeurs to take to the wheel. To fight fatigue, reserve drivers in buses could be made mandatory which will not only ensure passengers reach their destination on time but also are in safe hands.
There is also a need to ensure buses are maintained, with brakes, engines, pumps and steering wheel getting the necessary repairs.
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