Comment

V isualise this ghastly scenario. A non-descript underground organisation kills some 700 Bangaloreans and injures at least 5,000 others. If that were to happen in one single event, you would surely have the entire world focussing on the tragedy and cooperating with each other to hunt the perpetrators.

If this were to happen, not in one shot but in very small doses, finally adding up to the same number, we would be so inured to the daily occurrence that we would not even notice. That is exactly the story, the true story, in Bangalore.

The organisation in question is not non-descript. It is the Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation. According to figures the government provided to the legislature recently, the BMTC accounted for fatal accidents at an average rate of around two per day adding up to 686 deaths in the first 11 months of 2009. Some 5,200 persons were severely injured in the same period in accidents involving the buses. The figures are much lower than the peak, which was in 2006, one is told.

When the figures are added up, the extent of the urban problem hits you hard. But since it happens on a daily basis, the shock is nowhere near what deliberate mass killings cause. Granted, the BMTC is not a terrorist organisation wantonly indulging in maiming and killing people. In the process of ferrying people from one point to another in a tearing hurry, it ends up, even though accidentally, achieving the same end.

Experts in traffic management and the traffic police probably have a very valid explanation for this. Bangalore has nearly 40 lakh vehicles. So the number of accidents, as a ratio to the population, which is probably close to a crore, or even the number of vehicles on road, is pretty low and so on and so forth. Two deaths in road accidents for a city of this size and a population so large is no big deal. That may be true, but when it adds up, it is disturbing and certainly very traumatic to those who suffer.

An even more obvious explanation is that traffic rules are rarely followed. How come BMTC, an institution which is otherwise efficient — it is actually one of the best in the country — has failed to deal with this issue? The answer probably lies in the fact that an accident that causes either injury or fatality is the headache of the insurance company that has to deal with the issue of compensation. The BMTC itself can feel sorry about the accident but move on as long it has insurance cover. It would be interesting to know from the BMTC how many drivers, who caused accidents because of sheer recklessness, were actually penalised by the corporation in 2009.

Let us forget all that traffic experts say. In order to make road travel less stressful, even if it is not completely free of accidents, Bangalore needs only a few things — lane discipline, strict enforcement of rules and severe punishment for offenses. These simple measures have been talked about often enough but nothing much is done.

If BMTC drivers stop driving menacingly, if auto drivers keep to a lane on the road instead of snaking around and if two-wheeler riders follow suit, half of Bangalore’s traffic problems will be solved. It would undoubtedly slow down traffic but that is a fact of life in a large metro. It takes only some effort on the part of police to do these simple things. Rest of it, BTrac or even the grandiose plans of Abide and BBMP can take its own time. Simply slowing down and keeping minimum discipline can save many lives.

The danger in not addressing this issue immediately is that citizens will take the law into their hands when an accident happens, as they do these days by burning a bus that runs over a pedestrian or roughing up drivers for even minor accidents.
Incidentally, you can be sure there will be more accidents because Bangalore will have more and more vehicles and less and less kerb alongside roads forcing pedestrians to take the road instead of footpaths. That is a consequence of complete short-sightedness in infrastructure development.