Days after a video showing a luxury bus skidding momentarily before the driver regained control of the vehicle on the Mysuru-Bengaluru highway went viral on the social media, sparking concern among the people, Mysuru MP Pratap Simha visited the spot on Saturday and assured to take corrective steps and prevent mishaps on the highway, whose stretches in Ramanagaram had witnessed flooding in the recent rains.
The video that had been shot from the side of a goods truck carrying carrots that had fallen by the wayside, apparently after a mishap, had raised questions about the safety of the highway.
Mr. Simha, who visited the spot at a bow-string girder built over a railway line at the start of the Bidadi bypass on the highway on Saturday along with the site engineer, said the reason for the vehicles skidding while passing through the bow-string girder was mastic asphalting, which was a specification of the Railways.
As a railway track passed under the bow-string girder, the Railways had specified that the surface of the road should have mastic asphalt to prevent seepage of water, Mr. Simha said sharing a video of his visit to the spot. The mastic asphalt was restricted to the stretch passing through the girder while the rest of the highway had a bitumen concrete on the surface, which aids the tyres to have a firm grip on the road, he added.
“We are trying to find a solution to this,” he said and added that already the surface of the stretch of road under the bow-string girder had been scraped with the help of an earthmoving equipment to make it rough so that the tyres have a grip of the road. “It may not be enough. I have spoken to the Divisional Railway Manager in Bengaluru about it. We will set it right after the rains,” he said.
It may be mentioned here that the viral video shot from the side of a goods truck that had apparently met with an accident and fallen by the roadside, showed an approaching luxury KSRTC bus skidding, but the driver managed to regain control of the vehicle and sped away, averting a major mishap.
