Traffic Characteristics have not Changed

 

Traffic Characteristics have not Changed

Retired life has its own charms. I get to read the daily newspaper in leisure and sometimes chance upon amusing titbits. The following is one.

Not only Indians, even the colonialists, the English did not care much for upkeep of public property or its use in a sustainable manner. Immediately you ask, how could the English done things “sustainably”, the word having come into regular usage only in the tail end of the twentieth century. If you notice the date line of the article, it is 1925 AD (BCE had not come into being by then), referring to an “English Act of Parliament passed in 1878”!

Therefore, as usual we are more than hundred years behind our colonizers. If damage was caused to the “highway by reason of ...” excessive weight or extraordinary traffic, “...the person by whose order such traffic has been put upon the road...” will be liable. It is not the driver of the vehicle or perhaps even the freight company but the owner of the cargo who has allowed or compelled the carrier to freight the vehicle more than the allowed weight who will be penalized.

The above in the English Act looks fair to me. In India, we are very ready to catch the small fish to let the big fish escape; just the opposite of what a stork does while standing on one leg in the water!

Raghuram Ekambaram