Sharing road with animals driver’s nightmare

Many mishaps have occurred when a driver had to brake or swerve to avoid hitting an animal … and many a times animals have been killed or crippled when the driver’s evasive tactics didn’t succeed. Either way, animals on the road spell danger.

Police record incidentally, do not present as alarming a picture as it actually is. It shows only two serious accidents occurred during 1998 so far both of them in April and both of them proved fatal for the animals involved. The first one which took place at Sector 45-46 road claimed the life of a buffalo and its calf, injured another buffalo and the matador was damaged. Another one, that occurred near Kajheri village between a Punjab Roadways bus and a horse-cart, killed the animal.

To single out "those damned cows" (or pigs, or horses) for curses is to target the wrong critter. Since no animal is ownerless, the hot-tempered would be better advised to rant against irresponsible owners who turn their livestock onto the roads sometimes deliberately herding them into the city where berms, road dividers and parks offer ample grazing.

The Newsline team set out in the wee hours last week in search of grazers from nearby villages and encountered one Mangu Ram, who readily confessed to bringing his animals to the city roads after midnight as nightly routine but stubbornly maintained: "My animals have never caused any accident." Like many other grazers, he favoured the southern sectors and sectors located on the periphery of the city for accessibility and availability of grass.

While cattle can be spotted anywhere in the City particularly the sectors on the periphery and Madhya Marg, pigs and horses seem enamoured of Sectors 14, 15, 24, 25, 38 and 45.

Enter Sector 38 and a white board greets you. "Get mares for shaadi/vivah here". No wonder, mares and horses roam around the sector all the time.

Acknowledging the problem’s dangerous dimensions, a senior MC official said over the past two-three months more than 1,000 cattle had been rounded.

He revealed, "the animals come not only from adjoining villages and S.A.S. Nagar and Panchkula but from as far as Ambala." The main difficulty facing the MC and Administration "cowboys", he said, was "the impossible task of trying to be everywhere all the time".

Even offering rewards for cow-catching has had little effect. About a year ago, the Administration offered a "bounty" of Rs 50 to anyone catching a stray cow and turning it over to the pound, but a few tried their hand at it.

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