On August 18, a 62-year-old woman was crushed to death after being run over by a container truck near the North Fort Gate junction during the peak evening traffic hours.
Exactly a week after the incident, the police are yet to trace the vehicle involved in the accident. The truck driver, who did not stop even after the accident, sped through the heavy traffic and managed to escape.
“We are yet to trace the vehicle and are now inspecting the CCTV cameras to identify the location it could have gone to’’, said Ibrahim, Circle Inspector, Tripunithura traffic police.
According to officials with the city traffic police, at least three cases of hit and run cases involving container trailers have been reported in Tripunithura, Ambalamugal and the Container Road over the past three months alone. Interestingly, the police are yet to find the trucks involved in these accident or the persons who drove these vehicles during the accident.
“One major problem associated with this issue is that most of these accidents take place during night hours. Hence, many of these incident are reported several hours after the incident’’, pointed out Sajan Koikkal, Assistant Commissioner of Traffic, Kochi East.
He attributed most of these accidents to overtaking through the left and also to the slip-up by other drivers in calculating the length of the trucks while overtaking, often leading to a head on collision with the vehicle coming from the opposite direction.
“Further, the truck drivers may not even feel the impact of the accident in case of side and rear collisions and hence, they proceed without stopping the vehicles’’, the official added.
To check the problem, police will soon start an orientation programme for truck drivers operating in Ernakulam.
Meanwhile, the container truck employees maintained that they were being dragged into such cases.
Blaming us
“The police are unnecessarily blaming us for several accidents during night hours. This is more frequent if the accident takes place somewhere along the container Terminal road’’, said P.S.Ashik, Chairman, Container Truck Workers Union Coordination committee.
