COIMBATORE: In today’s cities, blaring horns, restless drivers, and endless queues at traffic lights have become the unrelenting rhythm of daily life—gridlock and rising accidents reduced to a grim background hum that everyone grumbles about, yet almost no one tries to silence. While most of us race to the office, shaving corners, jumping reds, or pushing the pedal harder just to steal back a few minutes, one man has chosen a quieter kind of defiance. Every morning, without applause or announcement, he steps into the chaos — not to conquer the clock, but to rewrite the rules of the road itself. G Manuneethi, a 60-year-old civil engineer from Theni, didn’t just ease traffic congestion but also transformed the way a city moves. Widely known today as ‘The U-Turn Man,’ his simple yet groundbreaking ideas have turned major roads across TN into signal-free corridors.
Manuneethi’s story did not begin with a grand plan but with a decades long journey shaped by observation, persistence, and an engineer’s instinct to simplify complexity. His approach first captured widespread attention in 2021, when Coimbatore was wrestling with severe traffic snarls and a worrying rise in accidents.
As the first officer appointed to the newly formed Road Safety Wing in the city, he found himself with little more than a blank slate and an urgent mandate: to find something that worked. In December 2022, during a discussion with the then deputy commissioner of police (Traffic), the focus fell on the Lawley Road Junction along the Thadagam–Anaikatti Road — a spot infamous for its clogged lines of vehicles.
Manuneethi saw a space where movement had collapsed under the weight of conventional traffic controls. It was here that his now-famous experiment took shape. Instead of depending on signals or barriers, he chose the simplest tool in traffic engineering — a roundabout. Using sandbags, his team created a makeshift circular island, switched off the traffic lights, and diverted vehicles into a continuous flow. What followed was astonishing. Within minutes, the junction that once overflowed with frustrated motorists became an example of effortless movement. The success was immediate, and it lit the path for the innovations that followed.
Manuneethi’s instinct for practical problem-solving had deep roots. Born and raised in Theni, he completed his BTech in Civil Engineering before starting his career as an assistant lecturer in a polytechnic college in Aruppukottai. In 1991, he shifted from the classroom to the field by joining the State Highways Department in Chennai as an assistant engineer—a move that set him on a path of steady growth. Over the years, he worked in Chennai, Coimbatore, Madurai, Dindigul, Theni, Villupuram, and other districts, eventually becoming an assistant divisional engineer in 2004 and a Divisional Engineer in 2013. His final posting was in the Road Safety Wing in Coimbatore, where his ideas would go on to reshape urban mobility. After the success of the roundabout, the police invited him to tackle the notorious Avinashi Road, a stretch that had long been a symbol of Coimbatore’s traffic woes. Undeterred, he introduced a new model: creating U-turns. By closing junctions and shifting the turning points 100 metres away, his team enabled vehicles to glide through without the halts enforced by traditional signals. The transformation was sweeping. Fourteen of Avinashi Road’s 15 junctions adopted the U-turn system. On Tiruchy Road, five signals vanished, creating an 11-km signal-free stretch. Similar interventions appeared at Saravanampatti, Kikani Junction, GCT Junction, Chinthamani, Ukkadam, Aathupalam, Sungam, Kurichi Kulam, and several other key points across the city. Chennai’s Traffic Police requested his guidance, leading to the first U-turn system at Spencer Plaza Junction on Mount Road.
Officials, initially hesitant due to the stretch’s importance and VVIP movement, embraced the method following a successful trial. The system gradually extended from Nandanam to the airport. “After Chennai, Madurai’s Guru Theatre Junction, Mary’s Corner in Thanjavur, Theni, Tiruppur, Erode, Salem, Ooty and even the Valparai Ghat Roads adopted the system. Even officials from Mumbai visited Coimbatore to study the model for p o s s i b l e imp l ement a t i on, ” Manuneethi recalls. Senior IAS and IPS officers acknowledged his innovations, but one of his most significant honours came from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. A team from the Centre of Excellence for Road Safety conducted a detailed assessment of his U-turn systems, preparing a report for academic and policy use. For Manuneethi, who had spent a career admiring IIT’s research, the moment symbolised a rare reversal—practitioners teaching theorists. In August 2025, shortly before retiring, he completed his final project at the Pal Company Junction in Coimbatore. Looking back, he says, “I was lucky to have collectors, commissioners and police officers who trusted me. None of this would have been possible without them.” Today, as vehicles flow smoothly through Coimbatore’s once-congested streets, they follow the silent cadence of one man’s vision — a retired teacher whose simple U-turn rewrote the rules of traffic across Tamil Nadu, and turned chaos into order, forever.