‘Govt ignoring safety aspects in e-rickshaws’

Nagpur: Even though the central government is planning all auto-rickshaws hitting Indian roads to have more safety features like doors or passengers retention compartments to prevent mishaps and mandatory use of seat belt from October 2019, it has reportedly ignored such measures in battery operated rickshaws across the country.
Following a court order, the norms have been formulated for autorickshaws, but ‘open’ e-rickshaws are more prone to accidents. “These e-rickshaws are open from all sides posing threat of anyone falling from the moving vehicle cannot be ruled,” a senior official from RTO admitted.

Also, there is no suspension system in these vehicles exposing bumpy rides for passengers, the officer requesting anonymity, pointed out.

Actually, the suspension system maximizes the friction between the tires and the road and provides comfort for passengers to limiting the impact of particular road conditions to not only the vehicle, but the passengers.

The city RTO and deputy RTO (east office) have registered to 15 and 1,501 e-rickshaws in their respective jurisdictions. However, the numbers of e-rickshaws plying on city roads are more than the registrations, said sources.

While the RTO is attempting to regulate the vehicles, the fare and route of the vehicles cannot be fixed. To a query, the officer pointed out that the fare and routes can only be fixed for those vehicles which are required to have a permit like autorickshaws. “After the centre declared that e-rickshaws do not need permits, these factors cannot be applied to them,” the officer said.

Team TOI toured many localities in the city and found that these e-rickshaws that are open from all the sides are more unsafe. We even spotted many e-rickshaws plying without numbers and freely transporting goods and passengers in north Nagpur, Gandhibagh and Mahal areas.

When the law was amended, the vehicles were intended to be an affordable and eco-friendly mode of public transport, the traffic experts said. They were supposed to be the last mile connectivity in areas where there is a dearth of proper public transport.

Traffic experts said that when the Central Institute of Road Transport (CIRT), a central government testing agency, had however, in 2015 notified rules for plying e-rickshaws, making driver’s licence mandatory and capping speed limit at 25 kmph, wondered how the safety aspects of the vehicle were ignored.

Vilas Bhalekar, president of Vidarbha Autorickshaw Chalak Federation said, “E-rickshaws were primarily for internal lanes. However, now they can be seen running on main roads. There is no control on their numbers which is adding to the traffic congestion in many areas like Mahal, Itwari etc. A lot of e-rickshaws running on the road are not even registered with the RTO.”