It has been just over a month since 25 private buses were seized by RTO officials for rash driving on various routes near Coimbatore. But another shocking video has now emerged, of a private bus overspeeding on the wrong side of the Pollachi road.
The video that has been posted on a Facebook group on Saturday, shows an unidentified multi-coloured bus, racing to get ahead of another bus. The bus in the video is seen speeding in the wrong direction, on the mud path meant for vehicles coming from the opposite direction.
The bus can be seen kicking a storm of dust behind it as it swerves dangerously onto the the right side, dodging oncoming motorists. The video seems to have been shot on a mobile camera, by a passenger in a bus next to the racing vehicle.
"The video shows rash driving for sure," says Muruganadhan, Joint Commissioner (Transport). "The Collector has been alerted about the same and after and inquiry we will definitely take action," he adds.
But this is not the first time that such nerve wracking videos of overspeeding buses have emerged. In April, a heart-stopping video of two racing buses on the Coimbatore-Pollachi Highway went viral on social media. Following this officials jumped into action the two drivers were arrested and their licences withheld. In addition to this 17 buses were seized from Kinathukadavu and six from Komangalam for reportedly overspeeding and competing with each other for passengers. Despite this, the ground situation seems to have seen little change.
Pollachi Sub Collector Gayathri Krishnan, who had ordered action in the earlier case had directed local RTO N Karthikeyan to look into matter and order monitoring of the buses. The RTO however claims, that his hands are tied.
"The construction work on the road is still underway and so we can't set up CCTVs yet. So we are not able to electronically monitor the situation," says Karthikeyan. "When we find someone overspeeding and putting citizens' live at risk, we cancel the bus permit for 15 days and the driver's license for 90 days. What more can we do?" he asks, exasperated.
According to the RTO, it will take at least three more months for the road to be completely constructed. "If it was a water or an electricity connection, we can just cut it off. But we can't keep taking all the buses off the road," he says. "At the end of the day, the drivers and the owners of the buses need to show some form of responsibility," he adds.