BENGALURU: The Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) spends a whopping Rs 100 crore towards accidents and other expenses every year. To address these issues, KSRTC is seeking to learn from Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL) and Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL), both of which have low accident rates, despite operating over 24, 000 trucks.
Speaking to TNIE, KSRTC MD Anbu Kumar said, “KSRTC operates over 8,000 buses every day and encounters at least one accident a day, some of which are fatal.”
Explaining the cost implications of the accidents, Kumar said, “Every year, KSRTC spends Rs 100 crore towards accidents. The costs associated with these accidents include the compensation to the victims, medical expenses and repairs to the damaged buses”
Sharing his recent visit to HPCL and BPCL facilities in Mumbai, Kumar said, “We also have accident prevention mechanisms but we would like to learn from them and implement the same in KSRTC to reduce the number of accidents.”
In the year 2022-2023, KSRTC recorded 770 accidents of which 231 were fatal, 89 were major, 450 were minor and 1,323 persons were injured. In 2021-2022, there were 494 accidents of which 153 were fatal, 55 were major, 286 were minor accidents and 656 were injured. KSRTC plans to invite experts from the oil corporations to help improve their accident prevention mechanism .