An 18-wheel trailer truck carrying a heavy container rolled down the sloping ramp of Vidyasagar Setu in Howrah’s Mandirtala when the driver stopped to ask a passer-by directions to Liluah after he had entered the wrong lane at the toll plaza.
The container tumbled off the trailer as the vehicle slid backwards.
Fortunately, there were no vehicles behind it around 4.40am.
The truck and the container blocked the road, forcing police to divert Vidyasagar Setu-bound traffic for the next four hours.
The container was stuffed with chemical powder used to manufacture paper, the police said.
Breakdown vans and wreckers deployed to lift the container failed to move it an inch, officers said. A special hydra-crane was finally brought to lift the container and clear the road.
Around 9am, vehicles started taking the Mandirtala ramp to reach the toll plaza of Vidyasagar Setu. By then, the driver of the trailer had run away, fearing someone had died under his vehicle.
“Since it was early in the morning, a major accident was averted. If the container had fallen on a passing vehicle or person, it could have been fatal,” said a senior officer of Howrah police.
“Some homeless people tend to sleep near the site of the accident. But none of them were around,” the officer said.
The trailer was heading to Liluah, Howrah, through the Setu after the container was loaded on it in Kidderpore.
The police said after crossing the toll plaza, the driver headed straight instead of keeping to the left and landed on the ramp that takes vehicles to Mandirtala in Howrah.
Not sure what to do, he took a U-turn at the first cut-out available and started climbing the ramp that takes vehicles from Mandirtala to Vidyasagar Setu.
“An eyewitness told us the driver spotted a passer-by on the ramp after taking a U-turn and paused to ask for directions to Liluah. It was then that the trailer rolled backwards,” the officer said.
“If the driver had accelerated and moved up instead of stopping, the vehicle would have possibly not slipped backwards.”
The container fell and blocked the road. Over the next four hours, all vehicles headed for Vidyasagar Setu from Mandirtala were diverted along a service road off the ramp to the north gate of Nabanna, so they could then head to the toll plaza on the bridge.
“The service road is quite wide and equipped to take the additional load of vehicles,” a senior officer of the traffic department of Howrah Police Commissionerate.
A section of taxi drivers who keep their vehicles near the accident site said cabs usually remain parked since early morning. But Tuesday was an exception.
“Some of us usually turn up early, by 4am, at the taxi stand for early morning passengers. But no one was there today,” said a taxi driver, who did not want to be named.
“The truck hit a railing and partially damaged our office at the taxi stand,” he said.