Ten TN road, rail users die

Tuesday, July 24, turned out to be a black day for Chennai as ten persons died in four different accidents in the city underscoring the fact that the metropolis is not safe for road and rail users.

While four commuters in a suburban train were crushed to death when they hit a lyconcrete fence abutting a platform of the St Thomas Mount station, six were seriously injured in the mishap. Some of the accident victims had to undergo amputation of their legs. Incidentally, two passengers had died in a similar manner in the same spot the previous night. The train was overcrowded and all the victims were travelling on the footboard of the overcrowded train. The Commissioner of Railway (Southern Region) has ordered a probe into the circumstances that led to the accident.

Elsewhere in the city, Tuesday also saw five persons losing their lives in three different accidents when the two-wheelers they were travelling hit by speeding water tanker, lorry and a mini van. Traffic in the busy Mount Road (new name is Anna Salai) went haywire on Tuesday morning.

While Nirmala (52) and her son Mahesh (29) , travelling by a two-wheeler, were crushed to death by a speeding water tanker in Mount Road, Kasi (52) who was travelling by a scooter along with his 17-year old daughter Ananthi were killed in a same manner by a speeding truck around the same time at Ponneri, a city suburb.

Twenty eight-year-old Pandurangan who was returning home after work was killed on the spot when a mini van rammed into his two-wheeler. The van driver fled immediately and the police is in the look out for him.

Statistics prove that Chennai has fast emerged as an unsafe metropolis with regard to road and rail safety. The city saw 1,183 persons getting killed in road accidents in the year 2016, according to State Crime Records Bureau of Tamil Nadu Police. The SCRB data says that road accidents claimed 17,218 lives in Tamil Nadu in 2016 alone.

Though figures for the year 2017 is yet to be released, the Tamil Nadu Government in a release stated that  the first three months of 2017 saw 4148 persons getting killed in the State. Though the State Road Safety Council claims that the number of deaths due to road accidents in 2017 has come down to 16, 157, the SCRB is yet to release its findings.

Water tankers and trucks have emerged as a law unto themselves in Tamil Nadu roads, especially in Chennai and suburbs. The water tankers are competing against time to make as many trips as possible in a single day to make more moolah while road safety regulations are thrown to the winds, according to a hapless traffic police inspector.

“All these trucks are owned either by politicians or people with influence in police. Hence you can understand our limitations in controlling them,” said the inspector who did not want to be named. His only plea was to make it known all over the country that roads in Tamil Nadu are not safe. “Not safe at all,” he emphasised. People who come to Tamil Nadu should bear in mind that they are setting foot in a land where jungle raaj prevails in highways  he warned.