An expressway for elephants!
An expressway for elephants!
July 02, 2012 12:00 PM
By Deepak Parvatiyar
Accidents on Indian roads cease to surprise. It has become a habit of our vehicle drivers to jump red light signals. We are used to cattle squatting on the roads or darting across in the form of traffic hazards, their excreta plastering the city paths. To drive on the wrong side is an excuse to avoid traffic jams and save time and fuel.
Accidents on Indian roads cease to surprise. It has become a habit of our vehicle drivers to jump red light signals. We are used to cattle squatting on the roads or darting across in the form of traffic hazards, their excreta plastering the city paths. To drive on the wrong side is an excuse to avoid traffic jams and save time and fuel.
While potholes are a regular feature, footpaths are not part of town planning in many of our cities and even if pavements are there, they are meant for the encroachers, roadside vendors and garbage dump. (In the locality where I stay, they are built so high that they look more like a parapet than a footpath. With no steps to climb them, the entire purpose of having a footpath is defeated). Even worse! More often than not, we find open manholes on roads and pavements whose cover are either stolen or were never placed on them. (Only recently the death of four-year-old-girl Mahi after falling in an uncovered pit on her birthday caught the fancy of the nation. But this was not the first case of its kind).
As I write this column, I find reports on authorities swinging into action to book the culprits – the owners of the elephants and the errant truck driver. But is that enough?
The pedestrians still walk on the road at their own peril!
Little surprise therefore that on Friday two elephants were run over by a speeding truck on the Noida Expressway near Delhi. One of them died on the spot while the other was lucky to survive with injuries.
As I write this column, I find reports on authorities swinging into action to book the culprits – the owners of the elephants and the errant truck driver. But is that enough?
I believe this is a classic case of authorities shirking their own responsibility because this is not an ordinary accident for the simple reason that it didn’t take place on a busy city street, road or a chowk but on an ‘Expressway’.
So what does it mean?
It’s simple. Aren’t expressways meant for speeding vehicles? The answer is yes they are. An expressway is a controlled-access highway which means that it is a highway designed exclusively for high-speed vehicular traffic, with all traffic flow and entrance/outlet regulated. (Access-control should not be confused with collection of toll. An expressway may be free to use and may not collect toll at all). It is the highest-grade type of highway with access ramps, lane dividers, etc., for high-speed traffic.
To make it simpler to understand, it will be apt to point out that India has only about 600 km expressways approximately. (Source: Wikipedia).
So coming to the Noida expressway, we know that it has highway patrolling teams in place there. The length of the six lane expressway is just about 24.53 kms.
So, can we presume it to be a comparatively lesser challenge to patrol this short stretch?
Perhaps yes.
Perhaps yes.
But still the two elephants could escape the notice of these authorities. So what does it mean? My intention is neither to spill beans nor to exonerate the culprit driver, but recently when I was driving down, I noticed that at several places, the metal fences were missing. I also noticed pedestrians crossing the road at these spots. To top it all, a friend of mine claimed that recently while he was driving on the expressway at night, he noticed some movement in the bushes on the left side of the road and suddenly an elephant (obviously with a Mahout riding on it) appeared from the bush and it was a close shave for my friend.
That tragedies on Indian roads don’t surprise anybody is understandable. We all know that our roads are substandard. We don’t follow international signs (It took me a while before I took to driving when I was posted abroad because I had never seen so many lines and patterns on the road back home in India. Until then, I had considered myself to be an expert driver!). I wonder whether we even know about the rule of the roundabout and about the pedestrians’ right. Yet, what we have learnt over the years is a lesson on road rage!
Little surprise again therefore that experts at the National Institute of Disaster Management point out that every year about 1.5 lakh people die in road accidents in our country. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies points out that today road crashes have emerged as man-made disaster on the same scale as tuberculosis, malaria and HIV/AIDS.
Yet, we have become so used to the tragedies on road that they don’t stir us up anymore.
So, no point arguing that why it takes something unusual like the death of an elephant on an expressway, to prompt someone like me to pen a write up on the issue.
So, no point arguing that why it takes something unusual like the death of an elephant on an expressway, to prompt someone like me to pen a write up on the issue.
Isn’t this ridiculous?
(The writer is a New Delhi based senior journalist and filmmaker)
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