Overloaded trucks make highway accident-prone

Two days since three members of a family from Amritsar lost their lives after their Ertiga car collided with a truck at Lamma Pind Chowk, there is no check on the movement of such overloaded heavy vehicles in the day time.

It is estimated that over 200 trucks mostly coming from Pathankot side pass through this roundabout every day. Drivers of many of these trucks take long halts on the Jalandhar-Pathankot road. They park their trucks along the roadsides. Since indicator lights are not switched on and reflectors are not installed on many trucks, these heavy vehicles are sometimes not visible to commuters. It’s only when commuters reach vicinity of trucks, they realise that heavy vehicles are parked along roadsides. This makes the road highly accident-prone.

The traffic police personnel remain deployed at the roundabout, but they seldom stop trucks for any checking. As the weather is getting nippier and mornings and evenings have become foggy, traffic issues on the road have aggravated.

Other than trucks, even tankers of the Indian Oil Corporation outside the company depot along Suchi Pind are a big traffic hazard. Several oil tankers remain parked in a queue outside the depot throughout the day in a wait to be filled. Two weeks ago, a car collided with an Indian Oil tanker while going up the flyover. The front portion of the tanker too got damaged in the accident. A larger number of loaded trucks also include those heavy vehicles that ferry grains from mandis across the district to godowns.

Officials of the Traffic Police Department said, “We have been deploying patrolling teams on a regular basis at Lamma Pind Chowk and in the Pathankot road area. Soon, we shall start challaning and impounding overloaded trucks.”