When roads turn killing fields

Tragic stories of loss and survival on Kerala's deadly roads, highlighting the urgent need for road safety measures.

Life put S. Shruthi, a resident of Chooralmala in Wayanad, to test when she lost nine of her family members in the catastrophic landslides of July 30 early this year. Hardly a month after she got over the loss of her immediate family members, her fiancé Jenson, who stood rock solid behind her at the time of the devastating tragedy, was killed in a road accident at Vellaramkunnu, near Kalpetta, in Wayanad on September 12.

The van in which they were travelling collided with a private bus at Vellaramkunnu. Jenson, who was behind the wheel at the time of the accident, succumbed to his injuries two days later. Shruthi learnt about the shocking losses in her life on rainy mornings on both occasions. “I felt a major part of the sky over my head crumble to the ground,” she says.

She felt lonely and her heart sank. “Life has been very cruel to me. I lost Jenson after the devastating natural disaster that killed my parents,” she says. But life must go on and she is struggling to get her life back on track by taking up the job of a clerk in the State Revenue department offered by the Kerala government.

The roads of Kerala continue to be a killing field. And those who survive these accidents are either maimed or traumatised for life.

Each year, around 4,000 lives are lost on the roads of Kerala leaving hundreds injured, according to the State Crime Records Bureau figures.

Recently, six students of the Government Medical College, Alappuzha, met with a tragic end when the car they had hired collided with a Kerala State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) bus at Kalarcode in Alappuzha on the rainy night of December 2.

The car, which was carrying 11 first-year MBBS students collided with the bus when they were going for a movie in Alappuzha town. Five of them were killed on the spot while a sixth person succumbed to his injuries later. The primary investigation by the Kerala Motor Vehicle department found negligent driving to be the main cause of the accident.