DHARMAPURI: The Thoppur police on Sunday arrested the driver whose truck had rammed into 12 cars and four other vehicles on Saturday leading to the death of four people.
Police said that the driver, identified as 30-year-old Kudpudin from Jharkhand, had absconded from the scene of the mishap on Saturday fearing an attack from angry bystanders. He was arrested near the Thoppur forest range. Police said he was booked and the cause of the accident was being probed.
Meanwhile, outraged Dharmapuri residents have alleged that poor planning in the construction of the Thoppur ghat road is the primary cause of the repeated accidents in the stretch of the national highway.
With demands for a permanent solution arising, the district administration is mulling an alternative route to Salem via a new project as expansion of the Thoppur ghat road is impossible because of the terrain. In fact, the district recently sent a proposal to the National Highways Authority of India to bypass this terrain and construct a new road connecting Salem and Dharmapuri.
Lorry drivers who frequently drive through the Thoppur road also said they preferred such a solution.
“We are outraged by this accident. Week after week lives are lost on this road and each time, driver negligence is claimed as the cause of the accident. We drive through this road every week with a heavy payload. It is impossible to drive on this road,” said Karthikeyan, a lorry driver from Dharmapuri.
According to him, when the vehicle with its payload picks up speed on the descent, brakes often fail.
“When we attempt to control the vehicle with the gears, the gear box has also been known to break,” he said.
As an added complication, drivers have to negotiate two hairpin bends back to back while descending.
“Blaming the drivers is not the solution. An effective solution would be to construct a straight road connecting Salem and Dharmapuri without hairpin bends,” he said.
Truck drivers also said that most vehicles carry payloads over their weight limits, confident that the weight of the vehicle will not be checked.
Dharmapuri Superintendent of Police C Praveshkumar agreed that the Thoppur road posed a problem.
“Drivers’ negligence is a common cause in accidents. If a driver is careful and follows the road rules most accidents can be averted. However, in the case of Thoppur that is not the case. The road is geometrically wrong. The gradient needs to be modified. As there are descending curves, vehicles with even low payload find it difficult to make turns,” he said.
“Immediately after the first hairpin bend, the driver has to quickly turn in the opposite direction and because of the speed generated in the descent most vehicles either topple or collide with another vehicle because of brake failure caused by vacuum accumulation,” he explained.
“We have identified these bends and have placed audio and visual warnings. We have also placed barricades in nearly six places. But these are only short-term solutions. This is an engineering problem and we will urge the NHAI to come up with a solution,” he said.
Dharmapuri MP DNV S Senthil Kumar said that the issues related to Thoppur had been conveyed to Nitin Gadkari, the Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways. “Recently, the Dharmapuri administration even sent a proposal for an alternate road. Previously, a Rs 140 crore-project was proposed to straighten the road, but that was not feasible. We have now proposed an alternate project in which a six-lane road will be constructed to Salem,” he said.
“If this project is sanctioned then trucks will not cross this area and accidents can be averted. But this project would take some years to be completed,” the MP added.
Collector SP Karthikaa also concurred that it was the 4-km stretch in the ghat that posed the problem.
“The terrain makes it impossible to consider any road expansion. A permanent solution would be an alternative road and we have sent a proposal. We will urge the NHAI to consider an alternate route as this Thoppur road is taking the lives of people,” she said.
Meanwhile, officials from various departments will meet on Monday to prepare some short-term solutions to prevent accidents, she said.
However, Thoppur plaza toll gate manager Naresh differed and maintained that the road was not the problem.
“There are only hairpin bends from Thoppur to Salem. In Ooty there are 14 hairpin bends and accidents do not happen there on a regular basis. Many blame the descent as the problem, but as far as ghats are concerned we cannot construct a straight road. All ghat roads require drivers to be patient and cautious and Thoppur is no different,” he said.
“We are looking into setting up ANPR cameras to restrict driver speed. Any vehicle which exceeds the speed limit on the road will be harshly fined,” he added.