The Kerala High Court on Wednesday directed the State government to inform it whether a proposal of bus operators for fitting their buses with automatic doors, instead of manually operated ones, could be acted on.
The court passed the order on an appeal filed by the Kerala Bus Transport Association against a single Bench’s verdict directing the police and transport authorities to take steps to ensure that all buses had doors as mandated by the Motor Vehicles Rules.
The bus operators submitted that pneumatically operated doors, if installed, would enable the driver to operate the doors on their own and address the safety concerns of passengers in a more effective way.
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It would also avoid the expense of engaging additional crew to operate the two doors. A draft rule issued earlier by the government required the bus operators to provide automatic doors. However, the government had ignored the draft rules and was insisting on manually operated doors on the buses, they pointed out.