When Chennai's roads turn killers, who should be prosecuted?

CHENNAI: From MTC drivers to gig workers and Resident Welfare Associations, the Greater Chennai Traffic Police (GCTP) conducted outreach programmes with almost every stakeholder as part of their recently-concluded ‘Zero Accident Day’ campaign.

A word to the wise: Reach out to the civic bodies and the Highways department as well, as they seem clueless about accidents due to bad roads despite many complaints from citizens.

The interior roads in our urban areas and even the arterial stretches are riddled with potholes, protruding manhole covers and patches of motorable surface in between. Be it a pedestrian or a two-wheeler rider, we’re trained to become obstacle-course experts, thanks to our civic bodies, who take zero accountability for the accidents caused because of bad roads.

The police too are at a loss in assigning responsibility as a bouquet of government departments or telecom companies take turns to butcher the roads and leave them worse than they already were.

A case in point is the death of a senior citizen in Ramamoorthy Nagar Main Road in Madipakkam (Tambaram Corporation) on Saturday, in which the 68-year-old V Chandrachari fell off his bike after his scooter hit a protruding manhole cover on the road.

Eyewitnesses said that he had not strapped his helmet properly and hence, suffered head injuries in the fall. A case was registered by the St Thomas Mount TIW (Traffic Investigation Wing) under the self-fall category.

“The average citizen has got so used to the indifferent attitude of our civic body administrators that you’d end up blaming yourself for not taking extra precaution than seeking accountability,” pointed out S Gokul, a resident of Lake View Road, Madipakkam.

On July 12, K Hemamalini, a 24-year-old MCom graduate was killed, and her elder brother was injured after they fell off the bike when it hit a water-filled pothole on Jawaharlal Nehru Salai near Tirumangalam. She was run over by a truck trailing them.

“It was raining heavily. I thought it was stagnant water, but it was a pothole. I fell to the left and my sister fell to the right. She was run over by a truck and killed on the spot,” her brother Venkatesh told mediapersons.

Traffic cops are also in the dark, as they could not possibly book a case against the roads. “All we can do is attribute the accident, if fatal, to bad roads,” clarified an official.

GCTP officials opined they regularly send a list of potholes on interior roads and arterial stretches to the several departments. “The irony is that by the time they take action on the list we send them, there is another set of potholes on the same stretch. In fact, we’ve asked them several times to allot a common time window in which all departments can undertake road cut works. But, it has not been considered,” stated officials.

There is also another issue of the road cuts being made by one department and the patchwork undertaken by another. If they are not addressed immediately, it becomes a problem, GCTP officials said.

The Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) commissioner J Kumaragurubaran said, “We’ve identified speed breakers in the city that are not conforming to Indian Road Congress (IRC) specifications. It has been rectified across the city at present. Also, the enumeration process of uneven manholes is ongoing at both roads and footpaths and soon the works will be taken up.”

Another senior GCC official stated that a few storm water drains (SWDs) that were constructed 10 years ago, are higher than the road or footpath level. “Based on the complaint, and during field inspection, it has been rectified in the majority of the areas in the city,” the official added.

The callous attitude of those responsible for our roads even gives space, sometimes, for ‘extraordinary’ measures, like the traffic cop who engaged a trans person to break pumpkins on Maduravoyal-Vanagaram Road to ‘ward off evil omen’ and reduce road accidents after a recent spate of accidents on the road, last year.

While the city police clarified that the officer acted in an individual capacity and removed him from duty, one can only imagine what if people started breaking pumpkins to ward off ‘evil omen’ off our bad roads. They would just be an addition to the obstacle course that is our roads.

(Inputs by Swedha Radhakrishnan)