BRT bus crash costs man toes

Rod impales passenger as bus hits railing to save pedestrian, report Vijaita Singh | Atul Mathur.

The Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) corridor is not only chaotic, it’s patently unsafe, and accident prone. A passenger of a speeding bus lost all his left leg toes in an accident that couldn’t have happened elsewhere.

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Rahul Kashyap was standing near the footboard when his bus crashed into the steel grill on the side of the road to avoid hitting a pedestrian on its path.

The grills pierced the thin body of the bus and went through Kashyap’s left foot. His toes had to be amputated. Kashyap, a resident of Sangam Vihar, is not sure if he will be able to walk again.

The pedestrian who caused the accident had no business coming in the way of the bus, and he wouldn’t have if there were enough overbridges for pedestrians on the 5.8-km BRT stretch.

In fact, this has been an accident stretch from the time construction started on it some months ago; it has killed five people and injured many, many more. There were two more accidents on Tuesday.

“According to the original plan, pedestrians should have got their own green signal when all traffic should have stopped for some time at a junction, which has not been done,” said a BRT project official.

The plans to construct overbridges were announced last week by Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit following public outrage and uproar over the chaos on the stretch during the trial stage itself.

Police said that the bus accident occurred around 8.30 am when the Blueline bus driver was trying to avoid hitting a pedestrian near Sector 3 of Pushp Vihar, roughly in the middle of the BRT corridor. They said the area is densely populated and there are no facilities for pedestrians.

Is there a case now for dismantling the BRT corridor completely?