An ambulance with resoled tyres trying to overtake a bus from the left at speed injured three students of St. Xavier's Collegiate School standing on a pavement at Lake Town on Tuesday morning.
Teenagers Sarangsh Bhalotia, Rishav Agarwal and Lavneesh Choudhary were lucky to escape with cuts and bruises, but the accident highlights how reckless ambulance drivers in this city treat right of way as a licence to violate basic traffic rules.
The ambulance that crashed into the boys was not carrying a patient. Police have arrested its driver, identified as 32-year-old Mohammed Salim, and booked him for rash driving (Section 279 of the IPC) and causing grievous hurt (Section 338) and damage (Section 427). If convicted, his maximum punishment would be two years in jail.
The injured boys had been waiting for a bus outside their housing complex in Lake Town around 7.20am when the Maruti Omni ambulance with Selim at the wheel swerved left, touched the pavement and skidded on its worn-out tyres before hitting them.
Lavneesh, a student of Class X, had screamed for his friends to move away a split second before the accident. "I had sensed that the ambulance driver wasn't in control and grabbed Rishav by an arm and pulled hard to get him out of the way. But it was too late," he recounted to Metro from his hospital bed. The ambulance struck all three boys before coming to a halt.
Lavneesh's father, Hari Choudhary, heard about the accident from their domestic help. By this time, some security guards and neighbours had stopped a Tata Sumo to take the boys to RG Kar Medical College Hospital near Shyambazar.
"I got on my motorcycle and caught up with the Sumo around a kilometre away. I asked the driver to turn around the vehicle and go towards ILS Hospitals in Nagerbazar, which he was reluctant to do. We then stopped another vehicle and shifted my son and his friends there so that we could take them to ILS," Hari said.
Rishav's father Rajesh Agarwal, who was in the gym when wife Reshmi called to tell him about what had happened, was delayed further by a road blockade in protest against the incident. "My wife was already on her way to the hospital when I got back home and took the car out. The blockade had just started and I was forced to do a detour, but I am thankful that our son is safe," Rajesh said.
Doctors at ILS said the teenagers were out of danger, although Rishav and Sarangsh remain under observation.
Benny Thomas, principal of St. Xavier's school, visited the three students at ILS. "I was at peace only after being sure that the boys are out of danger," he said.
A senior police officer admitted that ambulances had become a traffic nuisance and a threat to safety. "They jump red signals and cut through traffic with sirens blaring even when there is no patient inside."
The reluctance of motorists to make way for ambulances on busy roads is, of course, one of the reasons why this has become a perennial problem. "A motorist is supposed to pull over, if need be, when he or she hears an ambulance siren. In Calcutta, very few bother to do so," the officer said.
At the slightest sign of a snarl, ambulance drivers routinely cut through the first opening in a road divider and speed down the wrong flank.
What makes it worse is that some of these vehicles aren't fit to be ambulances.
A police officer said all four tyres of the Omni involved in Tuesday's accident had been resoled. The illegal practice of replacing the tread on worn-out tyres with a new layer of rubber has been a factor in many accidents.
Additional reporting by Rith Basu
