Tanker lorry in hit and run in Chennai: Look out for PY 01 Q 2377

A white tanker lorry involved in a car hit-and-run case escaped in traffic on Kamarajar Salai today, November 22, 2007 around 11.15 a.m.

If you want details, you can mail me.

The hit and run vehicle PY 01 Q 2377 did not cause injuries but damaged a car on the road and escaped. It is possibly involved in some criminal activity. Since the tanker did not heed the signal of road users to stop all along Kamarajar Salai from All India Radio to Napier Bridge, it is most probably involved in some illegal activity.

If you own this vehicle, you should report to Police, if not the insurance company for this tanker should respond. This tanker is not fit for insurance and it is driven by people who do not know driving and are probably not properly licensed.

Members of the public should report the sighting of this tanker to police, urging a proper investigation into its activities.

A call was made to Police on the emergency number 100 today at about 11.25 a.m. but there was no response and the control room did not respond to the call which apparently dropped.

Such vehicles must be refused insurance and pulled off the road, and their rash and negligent drivers arrested for prima facie illegality because they cause economic loss to the country in general and law-abiding individuals in particular.

These drivers make motor vehicle insurance meaningless, because they cause avoidable claims and affect those with unavoidable insurance claims. The operation of nationalised motor vehicle insurance through compalies such as the United India Insurance, National Insurance and others is bankrupted by such drivers, although these companies are partly to blame themselves for not insisting on proper enforcement by the Police and the installation of closed circuit television cameras along roads to fix responsibility.

It is also strange that the Chennai City Police control room did not respond to the call on an emergency number. Even if it was cut off due to call drop, the Police should have used the caller ID and returned the call immediately.

In Chennai, all cars are bumped

You see those nice car ads on television and ultimately decide to take the plunge. You drive off a spanking new, shiny, smooth piece of metal from the automobile dealership, the celebratory tape on the bonnet telling the world that you have decided to make the traffic jam worse by at least one car.

In Chennai, you then realise that your shiny contraption is destined to soon look battered and bruised. Your relatives don't see the point in avoiding driving into the mad whirl of T.Nagar. So you inch along, with autorickshaws that look like noisy garbage cans threatening to test your nerve. Large garbage trucks crowd you out, semi-literate drivers in three-wheeled carriages rush at you...you feel that you and your new car are in a nasty PC game that could be called "Monster Chennai Traffic" or something.

THUMP! Your rear bumber has finally been put to the test. Behind you is either a crazed motorcyclist who wants to drive through you, or an Indicab taxi, or sadly, a very literate stupid middle class moron driving, mostly, a battered piece of junk.

That's what happened to me in my new Alto today. There was this stupid out-of-towner in his white junk-like Maruti 800 (TN 38 F 4955) who just thumped his car into the back of my stationary Alto in front of Chennai's nuclear traffic generator, Saravana Stores, in Panagal Park.

"Sorry," said the culprit. He was so nervous that he quickly sped away.

Luckily, the Alto has been designed for backside hits from middle class morons driving mobile junk. So it showed only a couple of scratches, although the laws of Physics tell me that some of that energy from our moronic friend's Maruti 800 has indeed been transferred to the bolt holding the Alto bumper. It won't hold very well if it is repeatedly targeted by more morons.

But it is not just me in this sort of position.

The next time you are on the road, or better still in a parking lot, look at all the cars and you will find that they all have that bruised look, particularly in the bumpers and on the fenders.

Which is why I believe that many of us should be abandoning the car and taking to the bus and the train. Those who insist on driving should be made to pay extra, so that the money will go towards buying more Metropolitan Transport Corporation buses and suburban and MRTS trains and operating them at sane fares.

Until that happens, we will have only bruised cars, new and old. Don't be fooled by all those girls who feel a little naughty and want to rub some sun tan in an Indica...or by the leather jacketed girl who is overcome by the sexuality of the widebodied Logan. Neither the girls nor those roads exist in real life. On the road with your new car, it is morons that are behind you, ahead of you...all around you.

Chennai Corporation's 'mud'dled clean-ups

In April 2006, The Hindu reported that the Chennai Corporation is supposed to remove the silt deposited during clean-up operations by Metrowater immediately from the site.




People in Chennai have discovered these past few weeks that the Corporation is not willing to clear its own silt removed from the storm drains, not to speak of the filth deposited along the shrinking city sidewalks by Metrowater. That is something pedestrians have to live with even in the 21st century. As I have come to believe, Chennai's managers want only able-bodied, young, fully sighted, intrepid and rich men to use the vehicle-choked roads and broken down, trap-like sidewalks. There is no place for women, children, old, sick and disabled people here!

Today, The Hindu carried a photo of the indifference of the Corporation, on G.N.Chetty Road, T.Nagar. The story is the same in Zone Eight of the Corporation, in Kodambakkam (from Brindavan Street to Rajnikant's Raghavendra Kalyana Mandapam). Incidentally, this road is used by blind people to reach a hostel located near the Kalyana Mandapam.