Guest Column: \'Use road humps judiciously with IRC norms\'

It is important to control vehicular speed on urban road corridors to ensure safety of all road users, especially under mixed traffic conditions in India where different types of vehicles and road users ,including pedestrians and cyclists, use the same road space. The most common form of speed control measure used in Indian cities, including Bengaluru, is speed humps. However, if not planned, designed, and laid scientifically, the speed humps can themselves become a safety and health hazard as they can result in accidents and also impact the human body due to the repeated jerks people suffer while driving over them.

There is a general tendency among different agencies and even individuals in Bengaluru to place unscientific speed humps randomly without understanding the consequences. This results in the humps themselves often turning into vehicle or backbone breakers. In the absence of proper and visible warning signages and road markings, the speed humps are often not visible at night and sometimes even during the day, especially during bad weather, leading to vehicle drivers losing control while negotiating them and ending up in accidents, which are sometimes fatal.

So it’s important that speed humps are used sparingly after a scientific analysis and using proper IRC guidelines. After all, we do have other methods of speed breaking measures that are less intrusive, like reducing the carriageway width at the identified location, introducing a small island to create a slight diversion in the vehicle pathway, rumble strips and so on, which can also be introduced to acheive the same result.