“Buses race with one another to enter the hub and this is causing accidents at the junction on a regular basis. The police must take punitive action against the bus crew, since apart from policemen, plenty of surveillance cameras are there at the junction. I have seen pedestrians being knocked down by buses and often end up lose sleep remembering the gory scenes,” said a shop owner at Vytilla on the condition of anonymity.
Members of the public blame the Police and the Motor Vehicles’ Department for slack rule enforcement and for having a soft corner towards private buses. But the police cite statistics and claim that they are doing whatever is possible to book rule violators.
The traffic police and MV Department officials blame “unscientifically-fixed running time” for buses being driven rashly. Personnel of the two departments and bus operators blatantly justified rash driving by stating that it is for making up for the time lost in traffic snarls. But they were at a loss for words when it was pointed out that private buses are rashly driven even on Sundays, early morning hours and public holidays when there is very little traffic on the roads.
Similarly, the three stakeholders deny any link between rash driving and collection batta. They have no answer though on why the crew takes the extra effort and drive recklessly through busy roads, thus endangering life, if they are not paid batta in proportion to the daily collection. They also denied that buses are owned by ‘benamis’ like influencial people and police officials and say that all this occurred during a past era.
A policeman expressed helplessness when asked why they do not take action against buses which incessantly sound polyphonic horns and race through the city, despite police personnel on duty at junctions being the worst affected by the annoying noise.
