STATUS OF POTHOLE DEATHS IN INDIA

- Prity Kumari, 2nd year, B.A.LLB,

Central University of South Bihar

Abstract

In India roads with potholes have nearly become universal. These potholes look like scars on
the beautiful roads. Everyone is familiar to these scars because potholes are one of the
public’s local concerns as they are the visible defects. Many perceive that the potholes are the
main causes of the roads being deteriorating.

The study tries to analyses the causes of these potholes, number of death occurred due to
these potholes, solutions, any existing laws, concept of ideal roads and all the relevant things
connected to this. In the present work, various problematic areas are taken into account to
assess the cause of the potholes formation and tried to find the long lasting solutions to tackle
the problem to prevent the deterioration of the road surfaces.

Since roadways indirectly contribute to the economic growth of the country, it is extremely
essential that the roads should be well laid out, maintained properly and strong too. The roads
as a whole act as a central means of transportation in India and nowadays these potholes and
humps on the roads are the biggest hurdles in this means of communication. In our day to day
life, there is always news about many road accidents in such cases, the potholes are the
primary cause for this. In fact, it has become the second nature for drivers to avoid potholes
which causes nearby vehicles to also panic.

In India, the budget of the road safety increased by a whooping 100.4 to Rs. 5, 217 Crores.
After having this much of budget passed in this sector, this problem has not been addressed in
the totality. Potholes took a deadly troll in 2017, claimed almost 10 lives daily with annual
fatalities adding up to 3,597 a more than 50 % rose over the total of 2016. Maharashtra
recorded a doubling of deaths at 726 year on year that produces disheartening evidence that
the road safety remains a casualty in India.

Introduction

As India is one of the fastest growing developing countries in the world and doing
exceptional development and work in the field of education, industrialization, fashion but
there are certain sectors where India needs to pay attention. The networks of roadway are
gigantic in India and are said to be only after the USA. India is a home to the many bad roads
and for the people of India, potholes need no introduction. Blaming the system or corruption
would not be correct. India had a total of about 2 million Kilometres of road out of which
960,000 Kilometres are surfaced roads and about 1 million Kilometres of roads in India are
very poorly constructed ones. Although, this figure will look pretty impressive but the
underlying fact is that the 25 % of Villages still have poor roads and links. Blaming politician
or corruption is not so correct.
There are many factors that had made this simple problem to a greater one. And one of the
factors among this is the larger growth in the number of vehicles. India with its high
population growth rate coupled with the economic growth rate has resulted in ever increasing
demand for vehicles creating a greater pressure on the country’s existing infrastructure. This
has added fuel to the fire.

India needs to have a gigantic organisation about streets. These are the predominant method
for transportation clinched alongside India today carrying very nearly 90 % for Country’s
passenger movement and 65 % of its cargo. The roadways have become the highly complex
road network spamming larger and larger areas. India has often been plagued with shoddy
roads, missing manholes and a host of other civic issues.

Meaning of Pothole

Pothole is a type of disruption found in the surfaces of the roadways, where a portion of road
materials has broken away and left behind a hole there. Most of the potholes are formed due
to the fatigue of the road surfaces. The chunks of the pavement between cracks and are
worked loose and may eventually be picked out of the surface by continuous wheel loads,
thus forming a hole.

Generally, it is of bowl-shaped hole and having a minimum width of 6”. Its severity can be
determined by the depth which are as following-

Low- less than 1” deep

Mild- severity between 1”- 2” deep

High- severity that is greater than the 2” deep.

Formation of Pothole

It is exacerbated through the process of low temperatures, as water expands when it freezes to
form ice, and puts greater stress on an already cracked pavement or road. Once a pothole
formed, it grows with the continual removal of broken chunks of pavement. If a pothole fills
with water the growth can be accelerated, as the water "washes away" loose particles of road
surface as vehicles pass through these potholes. It can grow to feet in width, though they
usually only become a few inches deep, at most. If these potholes become large enough, can
damage the tires and vehicle suspensions occurs. As a result, serious road accidents can
occur, especially on motorways where vehicle are at greater speed.
 1.Potholes begin after 2.The moisture freezes
snow or rain seeps into when temperatures drop,
the soil below the road causing the ground to
surface. expand and push the
pavement up.

3.As the temperatures rise, the
ground returns to normal level
but the pavement often remains
raised. This creates a gap
between the pavement and the
ground below it.
4.When vehicles drive over this
cavity, the pavement surface
cracks and falls into the hollow
space leading to the birth of
another pothole.

Causes of Potholes

The primary cause of formation of potholes in roads is the presence of excessive water on the
road surfaces. Its formation differs somewhat depending on the environmental conditions,
traffic loading, road pavement structure and materials used and many more factors. The
majority of potholes are caused by the interaction of the environmental conditions, water
logging in the road pavement structure and tire loads. Potholes can also be formed due to
these factors, non-structural causes such as-

 Diesel or any other spillages.

 Mechanical damage to road surfaces.

 Damage caused by falling rocks and cuttings.

 Animal hooves on the road surface during the hot weather.

 Lack of bond between the surfacing of the materials and WBM base.

 Insufficient bitumen content in the road materials.

Damage because of Potholes

Potholes create a larger problem not only to the people but also to the environment. Some of
its impacts are as follows-

Societal impact

 Potholes have caused 3597 last year, which is much more than any other cause of
unnatural deaths occurred.
  Creates a traffic jam that is wastage of a lot of human hours.
 Damage Roads leads to burn more fuel leading to more air pollution.
 Jerk due to Potholes leads to several health problems including back issues, pain and
many more.

Impact on economy

 India import 85 Billion Dollar of fuel i.e 6 Lac Crore. Approximately, 10% of fuels
are wasted due to potholes. After saving a lot of this money, the value of rupees can
be appreciated.
 Damaged to imported vehicles caused due to potholes further increases the dollar bill
and depreciates the value of rupee.

Impacts on the goods

 Lots of perishable goods like fruits, vegetables etc, are wasted in huge quantity due to
potholes.
 The life of vehicles is reduces and their efficiency decreases.
 Percentage of damage and spoiled goods increase compared to good roads.

Pothole kills

It is very uncertain that it may necessarily cause death to anyone but have the capability of
causing accidents that may be serious or even fatal in their nature.

Pothole crash

In 2016, potholes claimed 6 lives every day in India and this number could be higher as
dozen of pothole related deaths happens unaccounted because there is less reporting about the
same. Also, the crash reporting protocols vary from state to state in India.

A state wise analysis of data pertaining to road crashes reveals that Madhya Pradesh, Tamil
Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra having a constant record of being the top four states in
road crashes, injuries and deaths due to the faulty roads and potholes.

Number of Pothole deaths that occur in India-

Some of the causes recognised for this increasing potholes during study are high traffic loads,
poor gradation of aggregates in the mixing of the materials, unsuitable material content, low
bitumen content, improper drainage, resulting in water logging on the surface of the water
which ingresses in the pavement and causes pothole formation. As per MoRTH (Ministry of
Road Transport and Highways) India, around a million accidents and approx. 10,000 million
road accidents based death happens every year solely due to these potholes. The data
regarding these road accidents are as follows-
Concept of Ideal Road-

An ideal road consists of different strata or sub-grades which have different sized rocks called
as aggregates. The bigger aggregates are called coarse aggregate while the smaller one are
called as fine aggregates. Construction of the roads starts off with three to four feet deep.
There are three layers of foundation - Coarse aggregates on the bottom, finer aggregates on
the top with bitumen or asphalt topping it off. Zero potholes would be a utopian vision.

Existing method for pothole detection

Potholes can seriously compromise with the safety of the driver and efficiency of the roads.
Existing method for pothole detection can be divided into vibration-based method, three-
dimensional reconstruction based methods and vision- based methods.

Pot-sense

In this method, Pothole detection can be done by using smartphone sensors. All intelligent
Transport system is an essential facet of nowadays world. These embody less- disciplined/
chaotic lane terrified, varied vehicle tyres playing at the same time and poor road conditions
such as potholes.

This uses particularly accelerometer and camera sensor to collect the information regarding
potholes on public roads. Further, it is broadcasted to all road users to ensure their safety. It
also helps in investigation related to the utilisation of different neutral network techniques for
processing the data obtained from the camera. Moreover, the data collected is analyzed for
the purpose of knowing the insight of the road quality and potholes.

Present Perceptions and laws on it-

The irony is that instead of filing cases against the contractors, engineers for shoddy roads,
police reports are often being filed against the victims or drivers for the deaths due to the
negligence. There are very least number of cases that are being filed against the contractors,
engineers or the authorities responsible for this. The number of the accidents goes higher due
to lack of any scientific method for reporting these types of accidents. As a result, many
number of accidents left unrecorded and no any investigation happens in these cases of road
deaths.

Laws and Guidelines on it-

The Indian Road Congress has prescribed over 100 guidelines for ensuring the
standardization of road construction, its maintenance and also for the repairing of the
potholes. Due to absence of any unified statutes or laws on road construction makes it nearly
impossible to ensure the repairing of the potholes. Although zero potholes are impossible to
be happen. The existing legislation Motor Vehicle Act, has no provision to ensure the
accountability of the authorities for defects in their road designs and maintenance.

The Motor Vehicle (Amendment) Bill, 2019

This bill has ensured the safety of the persons to the same extend by providing a National
Road Safety Board by the Central Government. Its primary work is to advise the central or
state government on all aspects of road safety and traffic management. It made the
accountability on the part of the authorities to ensure the safety of the persons. It has also
made the provisions regarding the fitness of the vehicle so that there would be least pressure
on the roads.

What is it and what ought to be

The potholes are the biggest scar on the beauty of the road and that is deteriorating day by
day. In many cases, the road fails due to a faulty foundation and the aggregates. During the
pace formation, the aggregates are not being used in the adequate quantities or sometimes
being completely ignored by the contractors.

The asphalts of the proper grades should be used, the mix has to be right and most important
the rolling temperature should be as per the specification. After first rolling, there has to be a
period of at least 12 hours of no physical intervention so that the materials should be set on
asphalt roads. Bitumen should always be laid with a slope on the either side so that water
could be easily run off to the drainage. Whenever cracks appear on the roads, it should be
filled with more bitumen.

There should be proper pothole detection system which will inform the authority and will
keep a log of data for future audit.

Solution

Pothole problem can be solve in three steps-

1. Drones – It will help in recording the present status of the roads and act as an eye of
the monitoring agency. It will give the proper views of the roads on the daily basis.
2. Artificial Intelligence- it will help in knowing the severity of the potholes and also
provides the daily data on the conditions of the potholes. It will also provide the time
stamp and help in finding the vendor to fix the problems of this problem.
 3. Web application- it will act as a supervisor. It will observe all the things and then
gives its findings that would act as a remedy to the said problem.

This method would reduce the fuel consumption, reduce the accidents, traffics and also saves
the most important thing, the man hours.

Conclusion-

In a nutshell, the potholes are the most common problems of the roads and effective remedy
is a dire need. There is a need to incorporate the safe system approach in all aspects from the
road designs to their maintenance. Traffic loading plays a significant role in the formation of
the potholes. It produces stresses and deflections on the surface of the roads, which lead to
the formation of potholes. Poor mixture of aggregates and low bitumen content in the
material causes the formation of a poor binding material which leads to slipping since the
surface is not bound to the underlying the base of these roads. It further results in the opening
up and loss of materials forming cracks or potholes. Improper drainage is also one of the
causes of the pothole formation because the water gets accumulated on the surface of the
roads and it gets moisten the roads due to which the surface gets swelled and afterwards it
makes a crack on the road. Thus, all these things lead to the formation of potholes.

The number of pothole deaths is so large but due to lack of any specified reporting protocols
and system, these reports left unrecorded. The great irony of this problem is that people
suffers with this but not try to file a suit against this problem.

Recommendation

People need to be got training in saving themselves from the potholes along with their
training of the driving. The drainage system needs to be improved and the Board formed by
the Motor Vehicle (Amendment) Bill, 2019, should take proper care on this problem. The
materials should be properly mixed and being used while making the roads. The Traffic
system should be regularized. Another way of regularizing traffic systems, is by improving
the public transport system, which will help commuters to lesser the use of private vehicles
and in turn decrease the vehicle load on the surface of the bituminous pavement.

The law needs to be implemented in this regard so that the authorities would be made
accountable.

References-

1. https://theprint.in/india/governance/15000-deaths-in-five-years-due-to-pothole-accidents-is-alarming-
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to-potholes-in-last-5-years/story-f3MJLUi4Gp0aubUZItSCDM.html
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