On Sunday, a family from Junnasandra, Southeast Bengaluru, had a narrow escape after their black Hyundai i10 car had a brush with a metro barricade at Doddanekundi on the Outer Ring Road.
The collision damaged the car's front right-side wheel, rearview mirror and parts of the bonnet.
Santosh Kumar, 33, a techie, who was driving the car, said the metro barricade fell on his moving vehicle. "The barricade fell on its own, damaging the front right-hand portion of my car," he told DH. "I'm still in trauma."
Kumar added that he neither filed a complaint nor sought damages from the metro authorities because it was a "minor" incident and nobody was injured. He said the insurance company had agreed to pay for the damages. "I don't want anything from the metro," he added.
A BMRCL official disputed this version of the incident and claimed that their inspection had found that the car had hit the barricade. "The barricade did not fall. The car came and hit it. The damaged wheel proves this," he said. He denied that the barricade was brought down by the wind.
Asked why the BMRCL didn't file a police complaint, the official said it was considered "unnecessary".
There was slight damage to the barricade, which is about 5.6 feet high and 5 feet wide. "It's a heavy barricade made of hard steel," the official said.
The barricade is part of the elevated Silk Board-KR Puram line under Phase 2A, which is divided into two packages. Shankaranarayana Constructions (SNC) Pvt Ltd is the contractor for Package 2 (8.37-km line from Kodibeesanahalli to KR Puram.
Barricades are placed to ensure visual obstruction of metro work. The BMRCL official said the barricades on the ORR line were of "very good quality".
In the past, vehicles have crashed into metro barricades. A similar incident happened in HBR Layout.
Sunday's accident was the third at a Namma Metro site in two weeks.
On January 10, a rebar of a metro pier buckled and fell on a motorcycle in HBR Layout, killing a woman techie and her toddler son.
On January 12, a motorcyclist was injured after a sinkhole appeared on Brigade Road, beneath which passes a metro tunnel.