The authorities have probably not woken up after the heart-wrenching accident at Mapusa Court junction in 2015 of a road roller that killed one woman while injuring others.
We see many road rollers running on the ordinary roads even when the Motor Vehicle Act treats it as a “construction equipment”.
According to the rules, neither the driver is required to have a valid licence nor needs to the road roller to be registered as a vehicle with the Road Transport Office. The law says that any vehicle that runs on ordinary roads needs to have a registration number. The fact that such vehicles do not have pneumatic tyres means they cannot be driven on asphalt roads as the vehicle could damage it.
Such construction equipment should be loaded onto a truck before moving it from one place to the other. But this rarely happens. The owner prefers to run it on roads thus risking lives.
Such road rollers due to their absence of pneumatic tyres that increases skidding in addition to its immense weight have every possibility to go out of control on the slopes.
The authorities are stuck to their routine of issuing challans for routine violations have probably forgotten about penalising such acts by irresponsible owners. I hope such crackdowns will be on the concerned authorities’ agenda at least from now on.