Traffic comes to a halt on ghat road as lorry breaks down

According to sources, the lorry was heading to Coonoor, when its axle broke away between KNR Nagar and Marapalam area.

As the vehicle was unable to move upwards, all the heavy vehicles coming by the way were stuck along the hill route from 8.30 am onwards. What added to the chaos were motorists riding the two-wheelers.

Honking and winding their way through the stranded vehicles, they drove through the available little spaces. This paralysed the traffic movement completely.

Almost half an hour later, a towing vehicle arrived and all the vehicles moving both ways (upwards and downwards) were stopped by police personnel to clear the way for the lorry that had broken down. As the operations took more than an hour, there was a huge pile-up of vehicles along the entire stretch.

A good inflow of tourists on the weekend compounded to the traffic problem. Finally, there was free flow of traffic only after nearly two hours. Tourists said that overloaded lorries should be barred from taking the hill road as they often develop problems and get stuck on the pathway resulting in frequent traffic snarls.