Freak road accident that shocked Karunagappally

Last week saw Tipper Lorries earning back the ill repute for being the death crusader on roads, as the capital city recorded three gruesome incidents that even involved death due to the reckless driving of Tipper lorries. Along with this came a freak accident on Sunday in which a woman was seriously injured in Karunagappally. This raised many eyebrows and interestingly, it was not tipper lorries this time.

The woman who was sitting on a scooter right in front of her husband’s workshop got entangled in a cable that came along with a lorry that passed by. The woman was flung into the air and landed on the ground some 20 m apart and tragically enough, the vehicle soared into space in the impact and landed on the woman, aggravating the concern. The woman suffered a serious shoulder injury and is currently in the intensive care unit of a private hospital in Kollam.

This is not new for Kerala to witness accidents caused by loose cables on the roadside. It is common for riders to get entangled in the carelessly kept cables on the road and invite calamity. Despite the increasing number of cases involving such cable attacks, the government and KSEB haven’t yet formulated a plan to end the crisis.

It has now turned into a laborious task for two-wheeler riders in Kerala to watch closely the roads, while also keeping a good eye on rearview mirrors, and comes with the additional duty of checking loose cables or wooden planks thrown carelessly on roads. Local cable TV channels and internet service providers are owners of these carelessly kept cables on the roadside. These are people who draw cable through posts of electricity boards under contract with KSEB, and some people install small poles and lay cable on their own after paying fees to local bodies and maintenance departments.

Among these, some people pay no fee but draw cables illegally. The rule requires cable service providers to affix tags containing information about their contracts at specified distances. Cables without such tags can be cut by the power board. But cutting down is not as easy as we talk since the cables of authorized firms and unauthorized service providers are all tangled up in the same post.

There are currently no effective inspection systems in place to ensure that cables are placed across roads at a height sufficient to avoid hitting heavy vehicles. The government had earlier implemented a scheme on an experimental basis to prevent these death traps. This experiment was conducted at Palarivattam KSEB section, Kochi. They removed six loads of cables in one month! This figure alone is enough to understand the extent of the danger of illegal cables.

The experiment made in Palarivattam should reach every nook and corner of Kerala so that two-wheeler riders can just look straight and drive, unlike in today's times.