Team-BHP - Accidents in India

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Originally Posted by hemanth.anand (Post 4455520)

This is one of the biggest fears I have when I drive on bridges and flyovers. More so when my vehicle is stationary on it and vehicles in the other direction are moving, causing the bridge to vibrate. How unfortunate are those people present there at that time.

Aren't you much safer when seated in your car on top of a bridge compared to being below? Especially in the city flyovers with low height. Imagine the plight of those below :eek: Poor souls. I feel that the infrastructure in our cities, especially Bangalore is overburdened compared to their designed load. Not sure how this will affect its life.

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Originally Posted by strawhat (Post 4455510)

There are electrified railway lines under the bridge. I shudder to imagine the magnitude of damage had that portion of the flyover collapsed and the live wires came in contact with metal or, worse yet, vehicles and people.

I seem to recall reading that the Railways does not allow others to construct the portions of over/under passes that cross their infrastructure. This portion (one or a few spans) is constructed and maintained by the Railways' departments. NHAI/state PWD etc. constructs only the access ramps.

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Originally Posted by audioholic (Post 4455572)

I feel that the infrastructure in our cities, especially Bangalore is overburdened compared to their designed load. Not sure how this will affect its life.

During peak hours, flyovers before & after Ecospace are completely full with vehicles, standing from one end to another end. Cars, buses, tempo travelers, water tankers and two wheelers occupy every possible inch on the fly over.
Are these flyovers designed with such a standstill load, for hours everyday?

I guess not, this situation will certainly reduced the lifespan of key load bearing components in the structure. But who cares in Bangalore. :deadhorse

p.s. Apologies for being OT, this thought crosses my mind almost every day when standing atop these flyovers, feeling it shake every now & then.

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Originally Posted by Engine_Roars (Post 4455463)

This looks like one of not so older bridges. God save this country. We must thank god everyday when and If we reach to our loved ones, alive & in one piece

This is actually one of the older bridges in Kolkata, definitely four decades or older. The biggest problem here is that the bridge is not maintained properly. The even bigger problem is how these bridges that span multiple jurisdictions are maintained. The portions over the railway lines are maintained by railways, there is a good chance the portion over water bodies by another authority and the regular portion by PWD. And we have all seen how coordinated our departments are.

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Originally Posted by audioholic (Post 4455572)

You are getting into too much details :D
It's just a fear...just learnt that it is kind of Phobia-Dystychiphobia or fear of accidents!

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Originally Posted by Acharya (Post 4455775)

Are these flyovers designed with such a standstill load, for hours everyday?

I guess not, this situation will certainly reduced the lifespan of key load bearing components in the structure. But who cares in Bangalore. :deadhorse

This is exactly the reason why they removed the signal on the Richmond circle flyover in Bengaluru. The builders (L&T I guess) told BTP that the flyover isn't deigned to take the load of stationary vehicles for too long.

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p.s. Apologies for being OT, this thought crosses my mind almost every day when standing atop these flyovers, feeling it shake every now & then.

It definitely shakes. It's not just a feeling.

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Originally Posted by airbus (Post 4454884)

Five members of a family were feared drowned after the driver lost control of the car and fell into Dikhow river in upper Assam’s Sivasagar district on 1st Sep evening. After two days of search SDRF, NDRF and local people could not locate the vehicle, so a naval divers team from Visakhapatnam was airlifted on 3rd Sep afternoon to assist in search operation on request of district/state administration.

After four days of hectic search, the ill-fated vehicle was found today. Rescue personnel retrieved five decomposed bodies from the vehicle. May the departed souls rest in peace.

(Picture Courtesy: Twitter)

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Originally Posted by hemanth.anand (Post 4456051)

This is exactly the reason why they removed the signal on the Richmond circle flyover in Bengaluru. The builders (L&T I guess) told BTP that the flyover isn't deigned to take the load of stationary vehicles for too long.

Apart from the fact that having a signal atop a flyover itself is ridiculous in the first place. The scale of mismanagement in infrastructure and infrastructure projects in Bangalore is quite impressive.

Bridges are designed to flex with load, because too rigid a structure would begin to crack. I have to be honest in admitting though that I wonder the same about the Hebbal flyover. It is has been a bottleneck for a decade now, and getting worse by the year. Quite common to find traffic crawling over it at a snail's pace during the morning and evening peak traffic hours.

A civil construction project is supposed to be built for worst case loading condition, and then a factor of safety applied on top of it. If a flyover design does not take into consideration the rare situation where the all occupant vehicles at any given point in time are the highest rated load vehicles (fully loaded truck), back to back, for the entire span of the flyover --- then the civil engineer deserves to be fired. Same goes with pillar/beam/floor design of multi storey buildings. Max possible load * safety factor - thats the method. No room for squeezing "efficiency". Otherwise it is as stupid as what happened in my college campus regarding a water supply tank (elevated, on stilts) for hostels - the designer forgot to consider the weight of water when specifying the pillars.

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Originally Posted by strawhat (Post 4455510)

. I shudder to imagine the magnitude of damage had that portion of the flyover collapsed and the live wires came in contact with metal or, worse yet, vehicles and people.

I can confirm that circuit breakers "That Work" are very much in place on our railway network. Had the bridge collapsed on the over head lines, the system would have tripped in an instant. What would have been really bad was if the bridge had fallen when a train is passing. Over being electrocuted, the fatality rate would have been much higher as a result of the bridge falling on a passenger compartment. Our trains are usually packed like a can of sardines.

Saw this crumpled S-Cross 1.6 at my MASS recently. My SA told me that the driver tried to overtake a truck from the left and rammed into a stationary one. The car was reportedly at ~110kmph and the driver didn't even get the chance to brake. Both passengers survived with minor bruises.

If the story is true, it does seem to be a bad crash. Glad that there were no casualties and also that the airbags did deploy in the Maruti.

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Accident on Mumbai--Pune Expressway today morning at 7:30 a.m resulting in multiple collision.

:OT - With the recent spat of vehicles jumping median/barricades on our highways, I really think a lot about driving on Indian roads. I more often than not, stick to the middle lane, and always expect trouble around the corner.

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Originally Posted by Vik0728 (Post 4456662)

... Xcent ...

.

That's an Ertiga. To me it looks like that the Ertiga has been pushed from behind and has hit the rear wheels of that truck and has in process turned.

I've noticed that the median these days have small shrubs on them which does help in night driving but same thing is a bane during day as well as night time when all of a sudden, some joker would let his motorcycle tyre peep through them before jumping into your lane.:Frustrati

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Originally Posted by sunejarahul (Post 4456539)

Both passengers survived with minor bruises.
Glad that there were no casualties and also that the airbags did deploy in the Maruti.

Both airbag deployed indicates seatbelt was used. This seems to clearly demonstrate that even in case of a bad crash at high speed, seat belt saves lives! agree:

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:OT - With the recent spate of vehicles jumping median/barricades on our highways, I really think a lot about driving on Indian roads. I more often than not, stick to the middle lane, and always expect trouble around the corner.

I have thought about driving on our highways so much that i haven't ventured out on the highways even once this year, not even despite having a brand new car! I guess I'm part of a rare breed of BHPians who don't live to drive; at least not in such conditions. Give me a long weekend and I go "that's a lot of time for me to lounge around in front of the TV."

I don't want to bother about staying safe from vehicles flying across the median, cows, broken down trucks, milkmen on mopeds crossing the median, slow trucks blocking the lanes, vehicles driving with high beam headlights on the wrong side...

<assume Eminem's voice>

...and the beat goes on da da dum da da da!
Lose yourself in the couch and stay home,
Stick to it and you better never let it go go,
You only get one shot to dodge a car flying at you,
Shree Yamaraj knocks multiple times on the road yo,
Don't you dare move it!

<let the beat recede, the camera pans onto an angry Eminem's face>

You can do anything you set your mind to man. Why not just stay home? Are you a glutton for punishment or something?

<Angry Eminem walks away emphatically from the camera with his saggy baggy pants on>

"The zero mile road" (featuring a happy, stress-free mind, a disgruntled family and plentiful Netflix time)