Stop blaming the railways for accidents in unmanned crossings

27 Mar 2012

Sir,
This is with reference who killed himself and the train driver yesterday at yelhanka trying to cross an unmanned level crossing.
It caused huge direct losses to the railways and tangential losses to the society.
The authorities overhastily should not announce compensations in such cases.
The imbecility and sheer recklessness of the truck driver should not be rewarded in any form or fashion.
It negates the legal logic that one should not benefit from ones own mistakes and sends a wrong message to the public that carelessness pays.
Assets to the society like doctors, engineers, teachers etc who get killed in reckless traffic accidents caused by others mistakes, donate their organs, contributing to the society even in their death.
But their deaths at best are the mandatory 50,000 rupees-if claimed- given by the government in all traffic accidents.
Where as sympathy/vote catching accidents like the one near Tumkur involving a dozen lives immediately brought forth a largesse one lakh each public money!
Such accidents are too frequent and can be totally avoided by minimal care and diligence by the public and other users of the unmanned level crossing.
Trains donot jump tracks people do.