Accident Rate Soaring : In New Delhi, Take a Bus and Leave Crashing to Us

There are times here in the capital of India when the pedestrian or private motorist feels like helpless prey for the aggressive green-and-yellow buses of the Delhi Transport Corp.

The notoriously poorly maintained public buses--most have neither taillights nor functioning windshield wipers--bluster and brazen their way into oncoming traffic. They bear down on all smaller, slower-moving vehicles as if demonstrating some Darwinian principle of survival.

“Of course, bicyclists and pedestrians have no rights here,” observed Delhi traffic expert Dinesh Mohan.

The buses swoop into bus stops without slowing, occasionally losing control and killing helpless pedestrians. And they seldom come to a full stop. Instead they literally drop off departing passengers and snag new ones, who often barely make it, clinging desperately to door handrails.

All of this has made the Delhi Transport Corp. one of the most dangerous urban bus systems on earth. International experts who have studied the Delhi system say it is 5 to 20 times more dangerous than bus systems in developed countries, including the United States and Britain.

The system’s operations, which so far this year have resulted in more than 200 deaths and hundreds more injuries, have caused more than one person to wonder if its former British-style name, the Delhi Transport Undertaking, was not a more fitting title. The Delhi bus system is a case in which mass transit approaches mass mayhem.

For example, on the weekend of July 4 this year in Delhi Union Territory (which, like the District of Columbia, is a centrally administered capital district):

--A bus demolished a scooter on a broad park-lined street, killing the passenger on the scooter’s rear seat.

--Another bus--”while negotiating a bend at high speed,” according to a police report--flipped over, killing two passengers and injuring 29.

--A third bus ran over and killed a pedestrian on a suburban highway.

--A fourth bus crushed a passenger to death under its rear wheels after the passenger fell from the front door.

Ridden by more than four million passengers each workday, and feared by all, the deadly buses of Delhi show no favor in their destruction.

On June 20, a loaded bus ran into a car carrying security guards for Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, seriously injuring nine people.

The Union Territory of Delhi has more than 5,500 buses in operation. More than 4,000 of them are owned by the Delhi Transport Corp. The remaining buses are privately owned and operate on a contract with the public corporation. Together they form one of the largest bus fleets in the world.

According to Philip R. Fouracre of the British Transport & Road Research Laboratory, which did a comprehensive study of the Delhi bus system, only Mexico City (with 8,400), Sao Paulo, Brazil (8,900), Moscow (7,900) and London (7,000) have larger full-sized bus fleets. Because of widespread overloading, however, the Delhi system may carry more passengers than any other.

A standard international measure of road safety is the number of accidents for every 10,000 vehicles. By this standard, India is one of the most accident-prone countries in the world. Although it has only 1% of the world’s motor vehicles, it is the scene for more than 6% of the accidents.

Far Worse Than L.A.

Delhi Union Territory, with a population of 7.6 million, and Los Angeles County, with 8.1 million people, are about the same size. However, about 10 times as many vehicles are registered in Los Angeles County as in Delhi. Nevertheless, Delhi annually records more traffic fatalities.

In 1984, the last year for which comparable figures are available for both locations, Delhi had 1,239 traffic deaths, compared to 1,181 in Los Angeles County. Delhi’s fatality rate of 26 per 10,000 vehicles was 12 times higher than Los Angeles County’s, at 2.1.

In fact, Delhi is well established in the top ranks of the world’s deadly driving cities, behind Amman, Jordan (45 per 10,000 vehicles), Seoul, South Korea (43), Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (41), and India’s own Bombay (31).

However, Delhi is unique in the number of its traffic deaths (nearly 300 in 1985 out of a total of 1,269) involving accidents with the government-run transportation system.

More than 22% of all fatal traffic accidents in this city involve public buses.

Local newspapers offer a daily tableau of bloody bus headlines such as these recent examples: “Bus Ploughs Through Crowd, Killing Two” and “Killers on Wheels.”

Mocked by Cartoon

A newspaper cartoon character asks rhetorically: “Why doesn’t (sic) the Delhi police arrest the Delhi Transport Corp.?” Another popular cartoon character, Chandu, mocks a Delhi transport plan to award trophies for good drivers. Chandu: “On the basis of least number of homicides committed per month, I suppose.”

Why are there such mean streets in the capital of a nation founded on the principles of nonviolence? Nothing outside of the monsoon rains or who has the ear of Prime Minister Gandhi is the subject of more speculation and discourse.

Delhi and surrounding northern India are supposed to be the centers of courtly courtesy, as exemplified by the two Lucknow nawabs who failed to make it aboard a train because they were too busy telling each other, “No, after you.”

If the story of the nawabs represents the courteous side of northern Indians, what of the pushy, greedy confrontations in the streets? Delhi is a place where driving schools teach that right-of-way is established by the size of the object seeking it: trucks and buses first, then cars, then scooters, then bicycles, then people.

The city’s police commissioner, Ved Marwah, asks, “Why is it Delhi’s people only seem to be in a hurry when they are on the road?”

Someone else might speculate why the statue of the god Shiva the destroyer is the favorite, almost universal dashboard talisman of Delhi bus drivers.

Studies Seek Causes

Several studies have tried to establish the cause of all the Delhi bus system’s accidents and deaths, and the conclusions include:

--The buses are terribly overcrowded, sometimes carrying three times the recommended capacity of 50 passengers each. According to Delhi traffic expert Mohan, who teaches at the India Institute of Technology, many of the passengers killed in bus accidents died because they were never able to get fully aboard the bus. Mohan said 28% of the victims were “killed by being crushed by another vehicle while riding on the (bus) footboard.”

--The buses are poorly equipped and poorly maintained. A 1982 study of bus safety here by the Transport & Road Research Laboratory of Crowthorne, England, showed that 92% of the Delhi system’s buses had no taillights or brake lights; 10% had bald tires; 50% had faulty brakes, and 4% had no horn.

“The driver cannot see the outside traffic clearly,” said Gurcharan Singh, a bus driver for 25 years who now drives a staff car. “On the one side his vision is blocked by too many passengers. On the other side, the driver mirror is usually not clean or is defective. The driver has to lean out the window if he wants to look at the traffic ahead.”

--The drivers themselves are often unqualified, poorly trained, overworked or just plain dangerous.

A survey by the Transport & Road Research lab showed that 55% of the drivers interviewed had never taken the basic driving test that is supposedly required by the Delhi Transport Corp. More than half of the drivers said they did not feel it necessary to come to a full stop at stop signs if they could see the road was clear.

Work Double Shifts

Owners of private buses operating in the system receive about $60 a day for each vehicle, and their drivers routinely work double shifts of 16 hours a day, six days a week. Such drivers are paid some extra money by owners, who thereby avoid paying a full salary for another driver. The extent of this dangerous practice was disclosed recently when Delhi traffic police spot-checked 279 private buses with Delhi Transport contracts. On those 279 buses, 213 drivers said they were working double shifts.

Neeraj Kumar, the Delhi police traffic officer who directed the bus check, said, “We also came across private bus drivers who, when they wanted to relax, asked bus cleaners to drive the bus.” Every bus is assigned a cleaning man.

An Indian journalist reports the unnerving experience of boarding a bus and hearing the driver, who was sitting in a passenger seat, loudly instructing someone else in the driver’s seat about the fundamentals of driving a large bus crowded with people.

The Delhi police traffic division is understaffed and has only a few vehicles dedicated to traffic control. So for the most part, traffic safety programs are limited to hortatory billboard slogans, such as “Lane Driving Is Sane Driving” or “Life Is Short--Don’t Make It Too Short” or the somewhat ambiguous “Take Care of Children on Roads.”

Patronage Rampant

Finally, there is the problem of rampant political patronage in the bus system.

With 43,000 employees, the bus system is one of Delhi’s largest employers. No fewer than 28 different unions claim to represent a majority of the workers. In the past, the unions and the Delhi Transport Corp. workers have formed a powerful bloc of voters for the ruling Congress-I Party.

A Delhi scholar familiar with the problem, who asked not to be quoted by name, said: “A large number of bus conductors and drivers have been appointed politically and feel they are above the law. If you are above the law, then it does not matter what happens in the streets. The DTC is a huge patronage system.”

Some regular bus users charge that politically appointed bus drivers and conductors, both of whom earn starting salaries of $100 a month, are sometimes in league with pickpockets who work the bus system, taking advantage of the cramped conditions.

“It is not unusual for them (the pickpockets) to take out a knife if they are detected,” said Ashok Sharma, 30, a Delhi salesman who is a regular bus rider.

Leading the effort to reform the Delhi transport system is Maj. Gen. R.N. Kapoor, a retired army officer who took over the corporation as chairman in March.

So far, the soft-spoken former artillery commander has instituted more than a dozen changes, including such obvious steps as requiring drivers to display photographs of themselves on the dashboards of their buses.

Visits Check Performance

Kapoor and teams of inspectors, with accompanying journalists, make daily visits to buses and bus depots to check performance. Kapoor will sometimes suspend employees on the spot for some offense he sees. He also gives instant cash grants to good performers.

He has ordered the grading of all bus drivers in three categories: A--excellent, B--dependable and C--requires refresher course.

In one step that may help control reckless driving, he established a blacklist of drivers who have been found at fault in a serious accident. When the British safety group did its study of the Delhi system, it found that 14% of the drivers had already been involved in at least one accident resulting in fatal or serious injuries.

Kapoor also holds open house every Thursday, and in the words of his press aide, “He allows even dependents of deceased (those killed in bus accidents) to visit him.”

In perhaps his most unusual move, Kapoor distributed 100 free bus passes to anonymous volunteers, citizens who are asked to file reports on the bus system.

For his reforms, especially his driver education and rating systems, he has faced some public criticism and ridicule.

With reference to the driver refresher courses, the cartoon character Chandu quipped: “I see (a refresher course)--on established methods of flouting traffic regulations presumably.”

According to Kapoor, the main problem with the system is overcrowding. There are no problems that could not be solved with 2,000 or 3,000 more buses, he says.

Kapoor, whose army rank and current position entitle him to a chauffeured car, tries now to take at least one bus ride a day.

He expresses a strong sympathy for the people who are dependent on the bus system to move around this sprawling city, even those who push and shove in the unruly bus depots.

“If I were they, I would also jostle,” Kapoor said.