THE illegal modification of vehicles, especially buses and trucks, which has almost never been adequately attended to, continues to remain a cause for serious concern as they keep adding to the number of accidents and causing damage to roads. Vehicles, especially the buses that carry a large number of passengers and the trucks that carry a huge volume of goods, are modified out of a profiteering motive. The modification allows truck operators to carry volumes of goods heavier than the permissible limit and bus operators to ferry passengers more than what the buses are designed for. A private survey shows that trucks and similar vehicles accounted for 23.33 per cent of fatal road accidents in 2024. Buses are said to have accounted for 13.45 per cent of fatal accidents. Both government officials and road safety experts say that such modification of vehicles, which distorts the standard design, creating a load imbalance and making them prone to accidents on the road, has been going on for ages, yet the authorities under no government have been able to address the issue even for short periods, let alone sustainably.
As for buses, owners modify the seating arrangement by reducing the gap between rows to increase the number of seats to carry more passengers. Whilst this causes a load imbalance, it makes rescue or escape difficult when they run to accidents as passengers get stuck between seat rows. Such modifications done by unskilled workers, jeopardise technical aspects such as stability, welding standard, the centre of gravity and inertia and make modified buses weak, fragile and risky. As for trucks, the width and length of the carrier are increased by fitting angles and bars so that they can carry more goods. Whilst the maximum load limit for a two-axle vehicle is, as a Road Transport Authority director says, 15.5 tonnes, owners are reported to be carrying 15 to 30 times the weight by using two-axle vehicles with six wheels. This not only puts buses and trucks at risks of accidents but also damages roads and weighing scales. The Road Transport Act 2018 in Section 40(3) lays out that any modification of vehicles in contravention of the technical specifications set by the authorities is illegal. Yet, the law cannot be applied to a huge number of transports because either the authorities are not serious about the enforcement or the many vehicles do not fall under the legal purview as they might not be registered.
The government should, therefore, go tough against vehicle modifications by stringently enforcing the law and with automated vehicle inspection procedures as the manual process has already proved far too inadequate. The government could also consider equipping private workshops after their registration keeping to due process.
