Doing away with 'Horn Ok Please' on trucks: The Maharashtra govt's plan is plain dumb

Who among us follows any rule, such as those displayed on official signage?  Hardly anyone.

Cautions against spitting or urinating have to enforced by painting images of deities or religious symbols of all faiths to prevent mischief like people of one faith creating targeting another’s. Even the mindless ‘By order’ signs seen on government boards asking people not to litter aren’t followerd.  Sab kuch chalta hai, but not the damned rules. And what are they anyway, if not to be broken?

Schools and hospitals come under no-honking zones. And yet, drivers use horns with as much abandon around them. Then there are those zebra crossings,that hold out the promise of safety for a pedestrian wanting to get from one side of the street to another. But it’s common to see cars edging close to the lines, barring the passage of the pedestrians, much as if they don’t exist.

When the Mumbai-Pune Expressway was opened, and speed limits set at 120 kmph, there were accidents galore. Those were the days of the low-tech Ambassadors and Fiats and the occasional Mercedes. A friend had compared it to letting bullocks run on the Mahalaxmi Racecourse.  Soon enough, they lowered the speed limit to 80 kmph but then better cars arrived and who likes driving at a snail’s pace? The 80kmph signage is redundant, but there they remain, because an altruistic government needs an excuse to say with a smirk post an accident, we told you so.

This brings us to the editorial in today’s Mint which points out that New York realised the futility of putting up no-horn signage and actually took them off. But in Maharashtra, despite this – or due to being unaware of it – has now banned the Horn Ok Please sign stencilled on the rear of almost every truck.  The logic is the invitation to honk leads to overtaking and noise.

Having said this, why is it that trucks alone sport that suggestion that honking is okay, adding the ever-missing polite touch in public discourse by requesting ‘please’? If you’ve noticed buses don’t, just like multi-axle trucks. Is the sign a result of the fact that in the past badly built trucks realised that they were slow on bad roads and others had the right to overtake them?

But this new rule got me thinking. Trucks registered in Maharashtra may have to oblige or face having their fitness certificates or licence to ply taken away. But what about those trucks with national permits issued in other states which pass through Maharashtra?

Will they be forced to mask the signs at the inter-state borders? Or would a helpful functionary at the check-posts wave them through? If so, how would the local authorities in the rest of Maharashtra know whether the truck is in the state with the connivance of those at the check-posts? Perhaps a network of bribes and sharing would emerge.

If masking the rears of trucks becomes mandatory for trucks from outside the state, then you can bet that all the delays that were sought to be eliminated at the octroi posts in cities of the state would re-emerge as a brake on the economy.  Industrialists had calculated the losses due to such delays and complained of bribery.  However, in India, complaining against bribery is politically correct but quite pointless. Those who promise to eliminate it are often themselves thriving on it. There’s a lesson from the past that may be relevant. When the Mumbai-Pune Expressway became operational, and the then minister in charge of properties of the Maharashtra State Road  Development Corporation found that many cars that could speed over 100 km per hour were banging into the rears of the slower trucks.

One suggestion to eliminate this was the provision of a public service for promotion of safety. The suggestion was the state should screen all trucks, and even cars, to check if their tail lights worked. If they didn’t, then they should be asked to get them repaired at a MSRDC-owned kiosk. But the minister  worried that this would hold up traffic because he knew most trucks are unconcerned about non-functioning taillights.  The suggestion was never implemented.

Instead of similar wisdom, the minions of the road transport department are tilting at windmills, or in this case the rear of the trucks.