Govt may amend rules to stop trucks from carrying protruding items

Dipak Kumar Dash, TNN | Jul 17, 2013, 01.09 AM IST

NEW DELHI: The government is likely to amend the Central Motor Vehicle Rules to ban vehicles from carrying rods and pipes protruding up to one metre beyond the body frame.


The Supreme Court had on Monday sought the Centre's response after a PIL said thousands of motorists died every year in accidents caused by trucks parked recklessly on highways, many with iron rods protruding from their body frames.

Sources in the road transport ministry said they were considering whether Section 93 of the Rules could be done away with as such protruding materials were responsible for several accidents and loss of lives. A senior official said they would soon start consultations to address the issue.

Section 93 of CMVR, 1989 allows goods vehicles to carry poles or rods or indivisible load "so long as the projecting part or parts do not exceed the distance of one metre beyond the rear most point of the motor vehicle". However, this is followed mostly in the breach with rods and other material often protruding beyond two metres.

"When the CMVR was finalized, we did not have huge vehicles. That could have been the reason behind having this provision. Now, the situation has changed and we have big vehicles. There is no reason why this section can't be amended so that we don't have such a situation on highways. We also need to address how we can deal with the menace on city roads," a road transport ministry official said.

Truck drivers seldom follow the rule of fixing blinkers at the end point of protruding material to warn vehicles coming from behind. Sometimes, city police teams conduct surprise checks. But there is hardly any regulation on highways to detect such violations, particularly during night.

KK Kapila, president of International Road Federation (IRF), said while rules are made stringent, there is a need to enforce norms. "Patrolling on highways and city roads to check such violations and unsafe practices must be stepped up. Fear of being caught will bring major change," he added.

The ministry's road fatalities data for 2011 shows that 10,841 persons were killed in accidents due to protruding load while 33,604 lives were lost in road crashes caused due to overloading. Uttar Pradesh reported the maximum 3,779 fatalities in protruding cases while it was 1,663 in Maharashtra.

Meanwhile, to check the overloading menace, the road transport ministry has circulated a Cabinet note to give power and incentive to highway developers to catch such vehicles plying on stretches managed by them. According to the proposal, which has been cleared by an inter-ministerial group (IMG), overloaded vehicles would have to pay 10 times the normal toll and that amount would go to the private developer.

For this, the developers would install weigh-in-motion bridges prior to toll plazas so that such vehicles can be stopped. Moreover, the trucks won't be allowed to move until they offload extra weight at their own cost. "The developers can seek help of local police in such cases," a ministry official said.