I quote an incident, which happened once in front of me. I was traveling in a private bus to my village. As the bus started from Rivoli bus stand, a private local bus coming from the opposite end informed this driver that the Travera was parked behind RKMV. Immediatly the driver called up the owner and asked if the officials have been paid or not. After talking to the owner, the driver was still shifty. The conductor told me that the driver apprantely had no driving license to drive the bus, as the regular driver had gotton off at Theog while coming to Shimla in morning and gone back to his native village and this man was a stop gap arrangement to take bus till Theog where the regular driver was to drive back the bus to destination. As the bus crossed the Travera, the people sitting inside just glanced at the bus and let it go without any checking.

This is the state of working of the transport deptt which is busy collecting money and doing nothing. There are interceptors given to RTO to check speed of vehicles. I have never seen this vehicle on road. Once I was at Goyal Motors, to service my car and this vehicle also arrived for servicing. Once the vehicle was cleaned up, at least 10 empty bottles of booze were thrown out from this vehicle.

Everyone is busy making money on the cost of lives of innocent passangers who have been murdered by the apathy of the authorities. May peace be upon the departed ones!

But our Government officials are doing nothing except showing their grief & announcing money for the families who have lost their near & dear ones in this accident.

Due to the negligiance of one single person the accident took place taking away many lives.

Rash driving is to be said the main cause behind this accident. This is not for th efirst time such accident has happend but no strict actions have been taken.

Such Private operators sho

Governments in any civilized societies have a primary obligation to safeguard the lives of its people and make and implement laws. But in our own country the main interest in governance is mainly limited to “big deals” only and not for such issues. We all understand the basic motive why people want to enter into politics. Lack of responsibility and accountability are the aberrations of our so called democratic system. That is why children keep on falling in bore wells and accidents like this happens repeatedly. The accident could have been averted, had some of the following measure had been taken.

1) It is the same spot where Dhamwari-Mashru bus met with an accident a few years back. The curves are deep and deceptive. I have seen this patch without tarring for the last few years. What are the reasons why Public works deptt. was unable to repair this 200 mt stretch?

2) Can’t we ban music system installation near driver’s seat and offer an alternative to play it another place convenient to conductor only. The complete ban is no answer when there is no conscious to abide by rules and machinery to check such rules.

3) The Bonut is used by the drivers is used as sitting place for near and dears. “gupp-shup” by the drivers while driving is a common scene and a big hazard to passengers. It should be mandatory to seal bonut region to avoid such a usage.

4) Speed limits should be monitored on roads to check competitive races for picking up passengers. The technology is very cheap and used world over. I wonder what our officers and beurocrates learn from west when they finance their official tours from public money.

5) Licensing should be made stricter based on written as well as the practical examination. People are not even served with a literature depicting road signs and rules, not to think about examinations. Influential class can easily provide licence to their domestic help for driving utility vehicles and thereby putting a question mark on road safety.

6) Talking on mobile phones while driving is a new road hazard not only to persons sitting in the vehicle but also to other vehicles on road. Everyone appears to be attending an SOS call. When common sense does not prevail, we have to be stricter in enforcing rules. I do not understand why government in Himachal is very soft on this front (due to good road conditions?), while it is checked strictly elsewhere. People may feel inconvenient in the beginning but it will help in maintaining better road safety in long run.

(Please Note: I have put my energy here only with a hope that anyone may be ready to accept some of the suggestions)