Potholes accidents are ‘deadly’. There have been several accidents and deaths due to an increased count of potholes in India. The road contractors and higher authorities are taking time to fix it and it is too late to find out people dying due to this.
You never know what would happen when anyone bumps into it accidentally. Deaths due to ‘potholes’ is frightening the people who travel on roads in India. In fact, pothole deaths sparked a new controversy on inefficiency and corruption among municipal and road-owning authorities.
A telecom engineer Manoj Wadhwa is absolutely livid with the state corporation for their inability to fix potholes on Faridabad roads. If the state machinery had acted timely then Manoj Wadhwa’s three-year-old son would have been alive by now. Wadhwa’s son met with a pothole-related road accident on Delhi-Agra highway six years ago and sadly, he passed away.
After his son’s death, Manoj Wadhwa decided to fix the problems on road as he started filling up potholes in a bid to counter such accidents in future. Manoj Wadhwa and a few of his friends took filled up some potholes.
Wadhwa went through some tutorials on how to fill potholes and he then reached the site with three bags of mixed bitumen and other necessary items.
With the help of two teams, Pothole Warriors and Pothole Raja brushed the spot to take out the dust and then poured the cold-mix in a bid to fill the potholes.
“We chose Sunday (Republic Day) to fill potholes with the hope that this will wake up government agencies. If a few of us can fill potholes, why can’t government agencies and contractors do this small thing despite having all resources at their disposal,” TOI quoted Wadhwa as saying.
According to him, if there was no pothole on Delhi-Agra highway on February 10, 2014 his son identified as Pavitra would still be alive. “He would have been nine years now. Negligence of agencies ruined our happiness forever. I don’t want anyone else to go through this pain of losing a family member. Now, it’s a mission of life and I don’t get disheartened even if I don’t get very encouraging support from others,” he said.
He has been tackling a battle against National Highways Authority of India and a private construction firm to fix responsibility for the pothole since then.
Talking about the heart-breaking accident he said, “Pavitra was sitting between me and my wife. I spotted a pool of water on the highway and applied brakes. As I lost balance, Pavitra fell on a sharp stone, which hit his chest. A vehicle coming from behind ran over my wife’s legs. Pavitra was declared brought dead when we reached hospital.”