MTC acts to prevent footboard travelling and road fatalities

MTC implements safety measures to reduce accidents, fatalities, and footboard traveling, including automatic doors and driver training programs.

The deaths in a majority of accidents involving Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC) are caused more by footboard travelling than collision with other vehicles. The footboard travelling, a result of overcrowding, has caused many deaths and loss of limbs over the years.

Activists have been demanding more safety measures. The Madras High Court had directed the Transport Department to devise a strategy to prevent accidents due to footboard travelling after school students standing on the footboard of an MTC bus were killed, having been hit by a reversing water tanker on Rajiv Gandhi Salai at Perungudi in 2012.

Then the MTC started buying buses with automatic doors, which were until then available only in air-conditioned buses. It also devised a strategy, along with the traffic police, for preventing footboard travelling of students by identifying ‘route thalais’, who were behind many students travelling on the footboard. However, automatic doors are available only in some of the new buses and not in the old buses.

A senior official of the Transport Department said that after the MTC adopted safety measures, the number of accidents as well as fatalities decreased this year from last year. The total number of fatal accidents in 2023-24 was 62 as against 73 in 2022-23. Also, the number of fatalities was 62 as against 74 in 2022-23, a decrease of nearly 20%.

The MTC had taken a holistic view of road safety: good condition of buses, proper working crew, and adherence to road rules. To avoid travelling on the footboard, 468 old buses, which were operated on high-density routes, were fitted with automatic doors, officials said.

MTC Managing Director Alby John said that considering the accidents involving buses and two-wheelers and injuries to two-wheeler riders, an accessory, called under-run protection safety guards, was planned to be fitted on 1,612 buses. It was fitted on 692 buses, and the work was in progress on the remaining buses, he said.

The MTC has also initiated a project, ‘Reducing Accidents Involving Public Transit Buses in Chennai’, along with the IIT Madras. Under it, 200 drivers were trained through simulators to improve their driving skills to avoid accidents. To motivate drivers to avoid accidents and encourage safe driving, the MTC rewarded 335 drivers who completed 10 years without being involved in a single accident, presenting them with 100-gram silver medals.