At least 26 people were killed and 27 others injured when a speeding tempo rammed into a stationary bus at Khalapur on Mumbai-Pune expressway around midnight.
The victims, which included four minors, were part a marriage party, said Raosahib Shinde, Superintendent of Police, Raigad.
Some of the injured were admitted to MGM hospital at Panvel near Mumbai while others were rushed to Sassoon hospital in Pune.
Keywords: Mumbai road accident, road accident, Mumbai Pune expressway
I would like to bring to your notice that , Eway rear-end accidents involving stalled vehicles are relatively common events.
This crashes can be prevented by employing well defined incident management procedures & equipments.
Problem is mainly at low visibility conditions.Thousands get killed because of poor warning signs put up at breakdown site.
In developed countries highway patrol police must put a Traffic Cone mounted "High visibility hazard warning light" to warn other drivers.
Those lights are even visible for miles & through fog & dust.
I hope that all road safety authorities will take a note & save innocent lives , before another vehicle crashes into a stalled vehicle.
Uday Ramdas Agle
I have been traveling on Mumbai Pune Express way quite often and would like to share the best way to drive on this highway.
1 - Wear your seat belt (many don't do it , just as a matter of comfort but in reality it's disaster to not wear it) 2 - NEVER, EVER increase or maintain the high speed of your vehicle while turning on the express way especially when you don't see the other part of the road that's coming up. 3 - Never try to break lanes and change them often as if you are driving a motor bike and just finding your way through the traffic. What happens in such cases is that you try to do it with success many times and then eventually find yourself locked up in a situation where you have to urgently apply brakes when you have no where to go , which is very risky. 4 - Never Drink and drive, if you do , you are heading towards destruction. 5 - Always use the parking light in tunnels and when you park the car.
8. No reflectors warning of breaks in the median. Again, how much will this cost.
9. Faulty brake lights.
10. Unimaginably flawed design and planning of roads. Considering a country that produces SO many engineers every year, the present state of roads is a shame.
11. Potholes even on highways.
Most of the accidents on the national highways take place when the
speeding vehicles collide head on against the Trucks parked on the
middle of the left lane if not more due non availability of parking
space .
That calls for allocating at least say nearly 60 feet of space at
say 15 ' on left and right side of highways on onward and return
directions and mark them for parking on the entire stretch .
This is how Highways in China / Gulf and other countries are planned
and laid.
When space with extra non metaled lane on left and right side of the
highway on either side of the median is made available The heavy
vehicles / cars etc can be parked by the drivers on the empty lanes
for reasons like break down of vehicles , answering call of nature ,
taking rest etc .
Also passenger buses can have stops on these spare empty lanes so that
they do not park buses on the highway to pick up passengers .
I just want to confirm the authentcity of news, are there really this much mortality, and around twenty patient were taken to bharati hospital as i was one of the surgery resident attending them. please confirm and corroborate with your sources.
Well for the past three weeks i have been travelling via expressway every weekend to bombay from pune.To my surprise, the highway which everyone admire to be one of the best highways in India , is actually very risky. Be it the bad roads or the GHAT sections this highway is full of pitfalls. I myself saw three major accidents on the road today when heading back to pune from bombay. The government should exercise some strict rules and definitely speed limit. Although the maximum speed to be allowed in the highway is 80km/hr but no one actually drives at dat speed. The government must make a separate panel to probe into all these problems as these issues are rising day by day leading to loss of human life.
85% accidents are happening because of careless driving.
Solution is simple. Follow rules!! (Govt while constructing, people while using). On Govt part, for any mistake, fine must be 10K rupees. If patrol police catches someone, he will demand a minimum of 2K and this is fine. Even if the people manage to escape from the law, our babus will teach a good lesson. Please dont say I support Corruption. People must change.!
Life is cheap in India. Callous disregard for safety is endemic.
Unless all Indians start following some rules in life, our country would never its full
potential.
Those who disobey road rules should have stringent punishment. The owner of the
parked bus would get away with a small fine. Road Transport Authority in India is one
of the most corrupt. They issue driving licences without tests. Vehicles are not tested
annually. You can run a vehicle with wafer thin tyres, and no brakes, with a driver who
without a proper driving experience.
We don't value quality. Cheapest vehicle available is the choicest, and travel from point
A to B is more important.
While roads are dangerous, Air India pilots are playing a game of cat and mouse with
the government.
I agree with each and every word of yours Dr. Kamath. If you sift thru govt records you’ll find that more people in India die in road accidents than in all the insurgent activities combined. And still there is no sensitivity shown to this issue - neither by media nor by the people, forget the callus govt agencies. Such news if at all find place in newspapers will be under "brief" or somewhere deep inside. I just wonder why media can’t cover such incidents with same alacrity they cover political news or Bollywood masala news? This news itself being 3 lines is telling you the story.
Nobody responsible for such accidents - be it erring traffic police, be it the road safety department or be it the drunken drivers ever gets punished. But more than anybody else I think media can play a positive role here by giving more importance to such untoward incidents by not just stopping at reporting but by going indepth and highlighting the possible reasons/negligence behind the accidents.
I agree with Dr.Kamath on the fact that there ought to be better
planning. RTA should revoke the business permit of the tempo. Police
should be empowered to stop and check vehicles for functionality.
Highway Patrol or the emergency dispatch must be notified if any
vehicle stops on a road without proper side lanes. There are very many
cost effective suggestions but no one to take...
I totally agree with Dr Rajesh Kamath. Not only in the west, even here in India on the expressways there are sign boards describing where to park the vehicle in the case of emergency etc.
But yeah, because of negligence on the part of people in following traffic rules even on normal roads, they end up killing themselves or there fellow citizens. Its the fault of the people as well as the local authority who fails to enforce the traffic rules in a stringent manner. This is the reason why Indian roads are the most dangerous roads in the world to drive at. More number of people are killed on the Indian roads than in anywhere in the world. In order to reduce such incident people need to fight for stringent rules and should follow the traffic rules themselves. We need Lokpal bill like agitation to get rules enforced as well as get a proper road infrastructure in place. Traffic is the biggest killer in the country guys, stop fighting for useless bills (Lokpal etc) and useless issues.
Recently I was travelling in a highway between Trichy and Villupuram, I happen to cross so many small towns that were bi-sected by the newly laid roads and highways. Why don't we take help from other countries who have planned the roads in much safer way. One should go in Chennai by-pass beween Tambaram and Redhills, the trucks and tankers are parked in the left most lane almost for a stretch of 5 KM, NO QUESTIONS ASKED. As Dr. Rakesh Kamath said, no blinkers used. The roads need to be used stricktly for moving vehicles and any parking should be done OFF the HIGHWAY. If any break-down situation, the vehicles should be cleared swiftly off the Roads.
My dear Citizen - wake up, this life is very profound, lets us not loose it. I sometimes happen to think that all these loss of lives happen because we are born in a nation where human resource is in abundance? Question to be given a serious thought.
You have no protection aginst careless driving. Do not blame the planners.If you dash against a vehicle from behind, whom do you blame? This is Indian way of driving and we seem to be comfortable with it.
I completely agree with Dr Kamath. I would also like to add that in my opinion the
Mumbai-Pune expressway is a death trap, especially in the night. I have driven
many a times on this expressway, and always with fear after sunset. Many a times I
have found the fast lane (the right most lane) blocked for road repair work without
any prior warning, stalled vehicles, and potholes ... and these become deadly with
the high beam from the opposite side traffic shining in your eyes. I have driven
extensively on expressways in the US and Europe, and have never seen such
callousness, or lack of simple precautions like blinking lights to warn approaching
traffic. I challenge the government to get a road safety audit done on this highway
and rectify those to save lives rather than get air ambulances. Finally, in my
humble opinion, with expanding network of four laned or wider highways, we need
to carry out a massive exercise of educating all drivers about safe driving on
highways.
A tempo rammed into a stationary bus is really shocking news for all of us. The driver of the tempo might be in drunken state, otherwise this accident might not happen. When the government will make this as a strict rule, not to drive if you are drunk? Even if the law is passed the police will not take this seriously as they will get sold to the small amount of money, sorry “COMMISSION”.
casualties in road accidents are the greatest man-made disaster in India, yet little is done for it's mitigation.
We all love to criticise the authorities and most of the time rightly so. However, in the instant case, we ought to know that most of us even don't know how to drive on an expressway. As it is we lack self discipline and we have scant regard for the rules and regulations. In such a scenario who cares for the safety, it is just 'I AM RIGHT' I KNOW' syndrome and we end up paying the price. So many innocent lives are being lost in road accidents in India every year with Maharashtra having the dubious distinction of leading the pack. Let 'SAFETY FIRST' become our anthem, rest will follow.
To add to what Dr. Kamath has mentioned: All heavy load truck & slow moving vehicle drivers seem to have taken oath to drive in right most or (at the max.) in the middle lane causing fast moving traffic to unavoidably take left most lanes which increases accident hazard to a great extent.
Frustrating.. :(( No govt. agency (don't know which one) is taking punitive action against this.
Accidents on Mumbai Pune Highway are becoming almost a monthly ritual.
Its hightime some initiative needs to be taken in order to stop it.
Highway patrols should be present there.
We Indians never value human life. Road safety is a tall order. It took the death of 4 US citizens to solve Mumbai Terrorist attacks that too not by us but CIA. Our country's leaders are only interested in amazing wealth even at the cost of countrymen and we are quiet. We have only independence in paper. Actually we have no freedom. Political administration has the money and muscle power to do anything at will.
This happens so often, but it never becomes a political issue, nor do
citizens try to do anything about it. 26 people died here, and i will
bet, not a single kith or kin will go to court protesting the lack of
road safety, no matter how much money or time they have. If a vehicle
has to park, then it should park off a busy road. In the west, if i am
not mistaken, they have specific parking areas for vehicles every mile
or so, by the side of the road. Here the practice is to park on the
road, or at best with one set of wheels just off the road. Because
parking spaces are just not provided by our beggared planners and
governments, and neither are they demanded by our even more beggared
populace. Even when the vehicles park on the road, the least they can
do is have their rear lights blinking so that oncoming vehicles are
forewarned, but the blinkers don't function in most cases. Passenger
safety in India is pathetic and the myriad concerned officials will do
absolutely nothing about it.
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