Hyderabad: RTC bus drivers continue to behave rudely with commuters even when drivers have been booked in four cases for behaviour such as speaking rudely, not stopping at bus stops, jumping signals.
According to M. Ravi of the Traffic Police in Panjagutta, four cases have been booked against drivers under Section 184 of the Motor Vehicles Act and a fine of Rs 1,000 imposed.
The recent death of a 27 year old woman in an accident at the Yousufguda checkpost was said to be due to the recklessness of an RTC bus driver and it has thrown locals into a panic again.
In 2019, some 608 cases were booked against RTC buses involved in traffic violations in Cyberabad and in one month, January 2020, 101 violations have been booked, said Traffic DCP Vijay Kumar.
In the Yousufguda incident, Sai Deepika, a sales executive, died when an RTC bus hit her two-wheeler near Andhra Bank.
There are innumerable complaints by commuters. Sindhu, a college student, said she was waiting for a bus in SR Nagar.
“I was getting into the bus and the driver saw me trying to board the bus but he recklessly drove the bus away and I fell on the road. Since its morning time, the rush will be more, but bus drivers don’t care to wait at least for a while for passengers to get into the bus,” she said.
Madhavi who lives in Mehdipatnam was returning from her in-laws’ house on Thursday at around 12:40 pm. “When I saw the bus coming into the bus bay, I thought it would wait at the bay where people stand on a regular basis, but the driver stopped the bus 100 metres away from the bus stop. Although the bus was moving slowly, we managed to get into it somehow. There was another woman with me, who asked the bus driver why he didn’t stop at the bus bay. The driver for no reason answered very rudely ‘You should walk to become slim since you are already fat.’ The behaviour of the drivers is filthy and the language in which they speak to the passengers totally upsets passengers.”
Mallika, a techie, complained about the way drivers compete with each other to get ahead which jostles passengers about, but the drivers don’t care, she said. She too complained that buses do not stop at designated bus stops.
Rajesh, a regular commuter, says drivers behave maliciously in some depots like Mehdipatnam and Secunderabad, where they don’t allow other vehicles to move on the road and they also use bad language. “This is cheap behaviour but passengers don't say anything because they don't want to get into an argument,” he said.
