Sunday’s accident involving a car and a blue metal-laden lorry fortifies the claim that the Tiruchi-Karur stretch of National Highway 67 is dangerous for road users.
The car that carried five persons from Tiruchi to Coimbatore was crushed beyond recognition owing to the impact of collision by the heavily-loaded lorry. Moreover, the onlookers, volunteers and the police, who were involved in rescuing the injured persons, had to work hard to retrieve the bodies intact as they were crushed to death. The death toll in the accident went up to four with a 10-year-old Sasthirka succumbed to injuries at a private hospital in Tiruchi on Monday.
This is not an isolated accident involving car and sand or blue metal-loaded lorries on this stretch. According to a report, more than 25 persons were killed in various accidents in the past one year alone. There were many minor accidents but several of them went unreported. “We need to accept that the number of accidents on Karur-Tiruchi road is on the rise. The stretch accounts for most of the accidents in Karur district. It is painful. It needs to be checked,” said a senior police officer in Karur.
Enquiries revealed that most of the accidents were reported on a stretch covered with two-way road. Not many accidents were reported on the four-lane road stretch from Sukkaliyur in Karur to Mayanur.
Reckless driving, rapid rise in number of vehicles, drunken driving, failure on part of drivers in following traffic rules, narrow roads, absence of service road and centre median were cited as main reasons for the accidents.
Of them, police admit that rash driving of sand and blue metal-lorry drivers had caused the most number of accidents. “There are many sand quarries in the Cauvery river along the NH 67. Several drivers drive at high speed to overtake others in their bid to load sand as quickly as possible. It often ends up in accidents, resulting in death of two-wheeler riders and car passengers,” the police officer said.
It is said that more than 5,000 lorries are used for transporting sand to various destinations, including Palakkad, Kozhikode and Malappuram in Kerala, Coimbatore, Nagapattinam and Karaikal from the quarries in Karur district. The officer said that the road was highly inadequate for catering to the need of lorries. Steps would be taken to ensure that the drivers followed traffic rules strictly. However, the issue could be solved if the road was converted as a four-lane highway.
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