Mangaluru: Motorists who travel on Bangalore-Mangalore National Highway 75 (formerly 48) and on NH 66 need to be extra careful, death may be lurking in every corner in the form of 16 wheel petroleum tankers commonly known as Bullet tankers. If not collision they will go out of control at the drop of a hat and slide helter-skelter causing lot of damage to life and property and more importantly the environment. They carry petroleum products including Naphtha, HSD, LPG and chemicals through world’s 18 most eco sensitive hotspots. Even on June 21, a bullet tanker had capsized on National Highway 52 in Yellapur Police Station limits and created tension.
There have been too many such accidents on this stretch of Highway 75. There are over 3000 bullet tankers plying on the roads at any given time of the day and many of them are interstate movers. According to the sources in the Police outpost in Nellyadi, ten tankers have met with accident in the last 3 years and in every accident noxious gas and liquid petroleum has endangered the safety of the area. Similarly over 1600 bullet tankers ply on NH 66 and 52 on a day to day basis. The most horrific accident took place on April 23, 2011when an entire Village in Perne on the National Highway 75 caught fire. Five persons died, 7 injured and houses and shops burnt down due to the inferno. Police records indicate that there are accidents involving oil tankers every now and then jeopardising safety of other road users.
On National Highway 75 alone over 2000 petroleum tankers cross the gates everyday towards Bengaluru, about 50 per cent of them ply in the day time and rest of them in the night time. There was opposition to the movement of the petroleum products through the road. The district offices in Dakshina Kannada, Hassan, Tumakuru, Bangalore Rural and Bangalore Urban Districts have sent repeated suggestions to the oil companies to utilise the Mangalore Bangalore Petroleum Pipeline (MBP) corridor for the transfer of petroleum products which is already laid between Thokur in Mangalore Taluk to Devara Gundi in Nelamangala Taluk in Bengaluru Rural District. But somehow the oil companies have not been able to stop sending oil and petroleum products through tankers. “There is a big tanker lobby from Tamil Nadu, and Andhra Pradesh that is working behind the scene” say office bearers of the trade unions in Mangaluru.
One of the tanker owners in Mangaluru says on conditions of anonymity “we have invested crores of rupees on the fleet, 80 per cent of the vehicles were new and are hypothecated to the nationalised banks, and if they do not get contracts the owners will be without jobs and the banks will be in losses. Presently almost all refineries have begun using oil pipeline grid of the Petronet India Limited and only a small portion of the production of refineries are being sent through oil tankers”
These oil tankers are very unstable on the road, especially on curvy roads, the bullet trailer (a huge petroleum tank mounted on a trailer) are not manufactured by the company that provides the front portion of the vehicle including the engine and the cabin. There is a huge pivot mounted on the vehicle which is a link to the trailer. “This link works as joint and keeps the engine and the trailer together in motion. But the pivot has to be frequently serviced for preventing the yawl and drag of the trailer, but the tanker companies does not undertake this exercise as often as it is suggested by the manufacturer. Brakes on all the 16 wheels should also work in tandem when braking but the trucking companies keep braking system on only the front and the rear wheels to bring down the cost of maintenance of braking systems on other wheels,” said a Transport Department official. “In case of sudden braking the sheer inertia of the tank and its cargo falls on the engine, steering and differential making the entire vehicle unstable and topple,” he said.
With the Shirady Ghat Road now being in good condition the tanker drivers tend to rip on these roads and jeopardise the safety of other road users.