(Silent) Killer on The Road

From The Doors’s song Riders on the Storm, the line “There is a killer on the road …,” is what came to my mind when I started writing this post. Those of you of my generation may recall this.

I live in one of the suburbs of the city of Tiruchirappalli in the central part of the state of Tamil Nadu. These details are not highly relevant to what I wish to write, still somewhat so. Srirangam is a temple town and not much goes on here except when there is something special happening in the temple.

Yet, there is a secular development that is making my head turn – I see a number of EVs (Electric Vehicles) of both the two-wheeler and four wheeler kinds.  The thought did cross my mind that Lord Ranaganathar (the suburb derives its name from this deity) has come in the dreams of many two wheeler clientele that if they bought an EV vehicle they can claim to be eco friendly, a noiseless feather in their cap.

But the Lord was not totally frank with them, about the dangers to the society on the one hand, and supporting liars on the other.

On the danger front, I have to set the scene in Delhi in the early to mid noughties of the 21^st century. DTDC (Delhi Transport Development Corporation) started running the low-floor buses. That really was good, in one sense. The entry and exits (one in the front and the other in the middle; the engine was at the back) were broad and were almost hugging the road surface. Inside the bus, it was much less noisy as compared to the front-engine buses run by the private operators, to which all the two-wheeler drivers/riders had gotten used to.

While the almost silence inside the bus was golden, the lack of noise of the front engines startled more than a few two-wheeler patrons (I was not one of them – for a couple of reasons, I did  not own a vehicle). In fact, in Europe, to counter the operational silence of electric buses created a lobby for incorporating a “noise generator”, and I am not joking.

According to an EU regulation, all electric buses must now have vehicle noise generators, so-called Acoustic Vehicle Alerting Systems (AVAS), which generate a warning sound at low speeds. (At high speeds, the sound from the tyres is sufficient to alert road users, I suppose).

This is the danger pedestrians and even other vehicle owners face with 2-wheeler EVs – no noise from these EVs, when noise is the one characteristic of Indians (indoor and outdoors) that cannot be swept away under the carpet. While walking on the streets of Srirangam I face this danger continually and I am doubly conscious. The same applies to blind people also. I take it as a penalty for endorsing “Green” initiatives.

Now, how about the “Green” claim. It is an eye-wash, probably not even that, is a straight forward lying through one’s teeth. How many of these EV owners, percentage-wise, can claim that they resource “Green” energy for their vehicles’ batteries? The truth is a big “ZERO”. Then, when it comes to disposing off the battery at the end of its life, how many of these EV owners, again percentage-wise, will claim that they have taken the effort to follow the “Green” suggestions on this matter? Again, a grand “ZERO”

In Srirangam, Lord Ranaganathar should own up to his responsibilities. Of course, so should Goddess Meenakshi in Madurai, Lord Varadarajar in Kanchipuram along with Lord Ekambareswarar and Goddess Kamakshi and on and on, all over Tamil Nadu and not leaving out Lord Sri Venkateswara in Tirumala in Andhra Pradesh. I do not expect customer behaviour to be any different in any city, suburb, town and village in Tamil Nadu; indeed all across India.

EVs are the new “Killer on the Road”, and they are silent.

Raghuram Ekambaram