Timber-laden lorry overturns in Kochi

Lorry carrying wooden logs overturns near Palarivattom, causing traffic disruption; driver sustains fractured arm, investigation underway.

A lorry packed with wooden logs overturned near an accident-prone U-turn near Palarivattom on the Vyttila-Edappally bypass on Thursday morning, with the result that the logs that fell off the lorry spilled over into the NH corridor and its service road.

The police and Motor Vehicles department (MVD) personnel who arrived at the scene arranged a crane to clear the logs from the slow-track of the four-lane corridor and the service road. The driver is learnt to have suffered a fractured arm.

Based on the statement given by the driver, police sources said the lorry veered off the road as the driver applied brakes on seeing a school bus enter the carriageway from a U-turn located around 50 metres from the scene of accident. The lorry is said to have fallen on its side as the driver attempted to regain its control. There were not many vehicles on the road as the accident took place before morning peak hours.

An MVD official, who was part of the team that arrived at the spot to help clear the road and probe the accident, said CCTVs in the area would have to be analysed to ascertain how the accident occurred.

Citing their inability to confirm whether the lorry was overloaded unless the lorry and the consignment were weighed at a weigh bridge, the police said the accident could have occurred in the wake of three possibilities — the driver would have dozed off and lost control of the vehicle, or he applied brakes late on seeing a vehicle take a U-turn, after which the lorry went off the road and overturned.

That the wooden logs had been cut to specific sizes before being loaded into the lorry helped clear them off the road before morning peak hours, they added.