Motorists on the Bangalore-Mangalore National Highway-75 (earlier 48) need to be extra careful, as death may be lurking in every corner of the highway in the form of 16-wheel tanker trailer ferrying petroleum products. On Saturday, an oil tanker lost control and crushed a mini-van, killing five persons and injuring eight.
Bullet tankers, as they are commonly called, certainly act as death traps because they go out of control at the drop of a hat and slide helter-skelter causing a lot of damage to life and property and more importantly, to the environment.
There are over 3,000 bullet tankers plying on the stretch at any given time and many of them are inter-state movers. So accidents on this stretch have become commonplace. According to sources from the police outpost in Nelyadi, 10 tankers have met with accidents in the past three years, releasing poisonous fumes into the environment.
If the tankers continue to ply recklessly, this stretch could turn into a burial ground, jeopardising the safety of other road users.
On National Highway-75, over 2,000 petroleum tankers travel every day towards Bangalore. About 50% ply during the day and the remaining during the night.
There was opposition to the movement of petroleum products through this stretch. The district offices in Dakshina Kannada, Hassan, Tumkur, Bangalore Rural and Bangalore Urban districts had sent repeated suggestions to the oil companies to utilise the Mangalore Bangalore Petroleum Pipeline corridor already laid between Thokur in Mangalore taluk to Devana Gundi in Nelamangala taluk in Bangalore Rural to ferry the petroleum products.
However, the oil companies are not paying any heed to the orders.
“There is a big tanker lobby from Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, working behind the scenes,” said office-bearers of trade unions in Mangalore.
Ivan Menezes, a tanker owner in Mangalore, said, “We have invested crores of rupees on the fleet. About 80% of the vehicles are new and are hypothecated to nationalised banks. If they do not get contracts, the owners will be without jobs and the banks will be at loss. At present, almost all refineries have begun using oil pipeline grid of the Petronet India Limited, and only a small portion of the production of refineries is being sent through oil tankers.”
These oil tankers are unstable, particularly on curvy roads. There is a huge pivot mounted on the vehicle, which is a link to the trailer.
“This link works as joint and keeps the engine and the trailer in motion. The pivot has to be frequently serviced for preventing the drag of the trailer. But the tanker companies do not undertake this exercise as often as is suggested by the manufacturer. Brakes on all the 16 wheels should work in tandem, but the truck companies focus only on front and rear wheels to bring down the cost of maintenance. This is what causes the vehicle to topple,” said an official from the transport department.
