Mumbai: A Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST) bus collided head-on with a private bus in Mulund West early in the morning on Sunday, resulting in minor injuries to the BEST bus driver. The accident occurred on the Thane-bound lane of Lal Bahadur Shastri (LBS) Road while traffic restrictions were in place to facilitate construction work on the Metro 4 corridor, and no traffic warden was posted on site to alert motorists about the restrictions, first responders in the incident told Hindustan Times.
The Mulund police station subsequently made a station diary entry against the driver of the private bus involved in the accident. As per protocol, the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) is supposed to deploy traffic wardens on ground through its appointed contractors when such traffic diversions are implemented. This was the year’s sixth accident at a Metro 4 construction site, and the fifth accident involving Mateswari Urban Transport Solutions, the wet lease operator which was running the BEST bus involved in the accident. A fire also broke out in the bonnet compartment of the BEST bus, which was operating on route number 496.
The bus conductor doused the fire using the extinguisher on board before the fire brigade team reached the spot, BEST officials said. When contacted, an MMRDA official dismissed the breach in protocol, and said that the accident involved two buses and neither the MMRDA nor the metro construction work were among the causes. But on Sunday morning, no traffic wardens were present at the spot when the incident occurred, the person quoted earlier said.
“The private bus should have stuck to the left-most lane, since the road was designated as two-way. Because the driver was unaware of the traffic diversion, leading to the accident,” the person said, but it was plying along the middle of the road, probably.
