Travel at your risk on Tamil Nadu luxury buses

CHENNAI: You have a ticket for travel on a luxury bus, but are you sure the vehicle is safe? Probably not, going by the accident near Vellore on Tuesday that killed 21 passengers. The airconditioned omnibus that went up in flames has put the spotlight on serious violations in safety norms during the body building process, particularly on providing mandatory emergency exits. Luxury coaches operating in Tamil Nadu need to adhere to norms for bus body design framed by the technical body of the ministry of road transport and highways. That is something they rarely do, claim experts. For example, while it is mandatory that buses have emergency windows with readily breakable safety glass as specified by the Bureau of Indian Standard, body building companies use fibre reinforced plastic, says T K Pandian, a quality assurance expert in logistics.Yet the vehicles routinely get RTO clearance. How is that so? Most of the road transport officers in Chennai—the guys who approve the vehicles—expressed ignorance about the norms and clammed up.According to Pandian, most of the private omnibuses are built by unauthorised companies, who cannot be bothered about niceties like safety. However, Volvo buses do have emergency exits and so do many luxury buses operated by the Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka Transport Corporations, he points out.On breakable windows, he says a hammer should be provided near the window. When this reporter checked out a Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation A/C bus, he found the hammer was near the driver’s seat. It won’t serve the purpose it is intended for. But does anybody care?