Thrilling roads, killing fields

 Speed, glorified in movies galore, is a sure thriller. And the City traffic police will scream at you through billboards that speed kills, too.

But the youth in their ultra hi-tech bikes and cars, driven by a massive dose of adrenaline, will have nothing of that. Give them a nice stretch like NICE Road, or an access-controlled flyover, and watch them zip thunderously, shatter every civilised limits of speed, and end up dead, abruptly. Like Sushmita Patil, all of 19 years, and many more of her age.

At 120 kmph, the vehicle that took Sushmita’s life was obviously difficult to control. That was precisely what happened, as the car overturned when the driver tried to avoid hitting a truck. Overspeeding, certified the police. But will the law enforcers ensure that someone else with a fad for speed take over the wheel again, to conquer another access-controlled, signal-free road? A tough question indeed, when Bangalore is being blessed with many more such high-speed roads and the police are not adequately equipped to intercept such vehicles.

The traffic-choked inner City roads aren’t the speedsters playground. The cops who line up on the old City roads aren’t so visible on the new super speedways. So, out they go scouting for these roads with their mean machines. For proof, check out the accident balance sheet on NICE Road.

Since January 1 this year, four youngsters, including Sushmita, have lost their lives on this tolled road. Manjunath Naiker, spokesperson for NICE, confirms that overspeeding and traffic violations are why most accidents occur here. The NICE company, he informs, has deployed 14 patrolling vehicles and two ambulances to monitor vehicular movement and to handle emergency situations. But even with these, its tough to track the zipping motorists.

Anupam Agarwal, Superintendent of Police, Ramanagaram, under whose jurisdiction lies the NICE Road, is anguished by the new challenges the road has thrown up. “Overspeeding and drag racing have been a constant attitudinal feature associated with NICE Road. But our hands are tied on many fronts. NICE Road being an access-controlled road, we are not able to put up barricades and speed breakers that are best suited to control this menace. Devoid of these options, we are left only with manual interception. But we face a crunch of human resources and also infrastructure. We have only a couple of interceptors and no survellience cameras installed on the road. We manually do the checks once or twice in a week but not regularly. The NICE authorities don’t want to antagonise their commuters, many of whom come for their fad for speed.”

The scene on the City’s arterial roads and inner ring roads isn’t better. The traffic police have imposed a uniform speed limit on all the roads of the City. The limit, fixed three months ago, stipulates that cars cannot exceed the speed of 60 kmph, buses and two-wheelers cannot go faster than 50 kmph, and autorickshaws and trucks cannot exceed 40 kmph speed. The Airport Road is the only exemption, where speeds up to 80 kmph are allowed. Till March 17 this year, the police have booked 22,843 cases of overspeeding, a significant rise from the 71,400 cases booked for the whole of 2011.
Overspeeding is usually observed in the early morning hours and late nights, particularly on the arterial roads of the City, including the Airport Road, Hosur Road, Peenya Road, Old Madras Road, Kanakpura Road, Mysore Road and Magadi Road and the Outer Ring Road. The police, on frequent drives to check overspeeding, have clocked cars speeding at even 150 kmph. Vehicles speeding at 100 kmph to 150 kmph are too common, say the police.

Interestingly, almost 75 per cent of the cases booked for overspeeding are related to four-wheelers. The state-of-the-art SUVs’ have proved to be costly for life. Two-wheelers pose a different problem. They usually indulge in reckless driving, zigzagging their way, wheelies and drag racing. Now that the police have started filing regular IPC cases of reckless driving for drag racing, leading to the seizure of the vehicles and also arrest of the riders, the menace has been curtailed to a certain extent within the inner city limits. But the riders and drivers have shifted to the access-controlled roads and the outskirts with renewed vigour. Punch drunk, they take to the roads, and drink again during breaks, as a reality check revealed.

M A Saleem, Additional Commissioner, Traffic, while confirming overspeeding as a serious menace, along with use of mobile phones while at the wheel, wants to see the statistics in a different light. The significant rise in the number of cases booked for overspeeding, he says, indicates not the rise in the trend but a stricter enforcement of the uniform speed limit.

Yet, the addition of new high-speed stretches, and the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP)’s plan to add more signal-free corridors running through the heart of the City, are bound to bring many more vehicles aboard. The entry of superfast cars, SUVs and hitherto unseen hyper-powered bikes will only increase youngsters’ urge to try them out on such roads. With disposable income levels rising and a lot more people willing to take risks, the police will surely find speed control a tough task. Their interceptor vehicles might be just not good enough!