The bus accident in Telangana’s Jogulamba Gadwal district has yet again raised questions about the safety of the private bus operations in the country. This comes in the backdrop of Telangana being among the top 10 States to report serious fatalities on national highways in 2022 (4.9%), as per the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways. A total of 5,268 road accidents involving buses were reported in 2022, which is a 40.9% increase from 3,738 in 2021 and this led to 1,798 deaths, a 28.7% increase as compared to 1,397 in 2021. As many as 4,004 buses were involved in accidents this year, the report further revealed.
The past year witnessed several such accidents in the Indian bus transport network, which is said to carry 10 times more passengers daily as compared to India’s railway network, touted to be the world’s second-largest. A few months back, a similar incident took the life of a woman who died while 10 others were injured when a private bus overturned at Chintapalli in Nalgonda district in November 2023.
In December, some 13 people were charred to death in a bus fire in Madhya Pradesh’s Guna, four on the Delhi-Jaipur expressway near Jharsa village in November and 25 on the Mumbai-Nagpur expressway in July of the past year. An electric bus caught fire on the Chennai-Bengaluru national highway in September and a Mumbai-bound bus on the Ahmedabad-Mumbai National Highway 48 in October, both cases of close shave for passengers. Other major bus fires in the past decade include the 2013 Mahbubnagar bus accident which claimed the lives of 45 passengers onboard, 64 persons were killed in the Kondgattu bus accident of September 2018 and in the 2022 Kalaburagi (Karnataka) mishap which saw seven people die.
“Even though we might have enough drivers to operate such buses, the quality of drivers remains a question,” says A. Bharadwaj, founder president of Society for Accident-Free Environment (SAFE), a Hyderabad-based non-government organisation working on road safety. “Drivers are supposed to be sent for the mandatory orientation by OEMs for their latest buses, which is often skipped thereby leading to such incidents.” As advanced technology vehicles take over, the drivers, who got heavy-duty licences earlier, are not fit enough to drive these buses unless proper training/orientation is provided on the model they drive, he explained.
Industry insiders tracking road safety in India that The Hindu spoke to also pointed out the lack of enforcement in terms of duty hours, periodic health check-ups, and stress management to ensure driver health, particularly by the private operators. They underscored an immediate need for standard operating procedures (SOPs) or standardised norms governing private operators in the country.
“The private bus operator segment, which caters to a whopping 90% of the total demand, is highly deregulated. This can be understood as 95% of the total private bus operators have fewer than five buses,” a senior road safety expert told The Hindu requesting anonymity. So what we are doing in terms of regulations is only touching less than 10% of our total bus network.
It is noteworthy that of the 24 lakh buses registered in India, only about 1.5 lakh belong to State transport undertakings (STUs) and the remaining 90% are privately operated.
“Drivers are under intense pressure to cut down transit times and hence are prone to over-speeding and rash driving,” said Anurag Singh, managing director of consultancy firm Primus Partners, who closely monitors road safety. “While buses and transport vehicles need fitness tests regularly, the process is fraught with corruption and lack of training of inspectors,” he added.
Alongside adequate driver training, license upgradation, particularly for heavy-duty vehicles, needs to be made an annual mandate to incorporate the rapidly changing bus technologies, Mr. Bharadwaj said.
Highlighting that it is the body of the bus that was damaged in the fire and not the chassis, Mr. Singh pointed out that private operators often make modifications to the bus design after it is released from the OEMs. Improper material, wiring and workmanship in these modifications are often the causes of fire.
This also a good time to consider raising the bar for minimum standards for safety when these vehicles are qualified for operations, another expert added.
Experts stressed the need for periodic vehicle management by private operators, especially at a time when the number of buses, frequency between city pairs like Hyderabad and Bengaluru and passengers has increased significantly.
