India’s love affair with speed mountains - (01 Jan 1988)

Motor Vehicles

Creaking springs, broken track rods, bent camber and toe fittings and your ruined back. Indian ‘speed mountains’ - officially called speed breakers - are an overachieving lot. So profound is their effect that they break speed not just in their vicinity but in the limping aftermath too. The ever more egregious design and use of speed breakers is indicative of a slightly more worrisome reality too - science-lessness.

Weirdly, the field - the speed breaker field? - itself is not devoid of scientific thought. The Indian Roads Congress, a body set up by the government, has been looking into all aspects of road design for decades. Just to give an idea of how detail-oriented the IRC is, as it would be being comprised of highway engineers: it provides specifications for road signage, numerous specifications for roads coping with myriad climactic conditions, individual structural components for flyovers and, oh yes, speed breakers.

IRC’s 99th Report ‘Tentative Guidelines on the Provision of Speed Breakers for Control of Vehicular Speeds on Minor Roads’ is a popular one, but dating to the 1988, one would assume it stands deprecated in today’s allegedly high speed traffic. Not to worry, road layers never followed it then, just as they don’t today.

The report is replete with discretion - only a series of recommendations it is - but a theme, of much value even today, abounds: ingenuity in design and don’t inconvenience the road user. It understands speed breaker use to be limited to an urban environment requiring a reduction in traffic speed to 25 kmph. “Their use on major inter-city roads outside urban areas”, it frowns, “is not considered a good engineering practice, and the Indian Roads Congress does not favour it.”

Their detailed, recommended design would come as a shock too: a mild hump that would cause little or no discomfort if taken at the prescribed speed, unlike those used today, which cause discomfort regardless of speed. What stead does it stand today’s city authorities in, knowing that in 1988 a body of engineers was able to comprehend too harsh a speed breaker would result in higher pollution levels.

For riveting reads on road construction and design, opinion on contemporary road safety matters, visit irc.nic.in.

Tags : INDIAN ROADS CONGRESS SPEED BREAKERS