The tragic bus accident early Thursday morning (Dec 25) in Karnataka’s Chitradurga district, in which at least six people were burnt to death, brings into focus yet again the urgent need to overhaul transport safety rules in India, especially those governing purpose-built bus bodies, and introduce compulsory fire-retardant certification for material used in the interiors.
In 2025, 59 people died in such accidents, mainly due to flammable material catching fire inside sleeper buses after an accident.
In the latest incident on National Highway 48, a luxury sleeper bus with 32 passengers on board went up in flames after it collided with a container truck that had jumped a divider.
Although three fire tenders attended to the blaze within half an hour, the bus was reduced to cinders due to the rapid combustion of the material used in the interior. All the fatalities, bar the driver of the truck, were passengers trapped inside.
The frequency of highway infernos involving sleeper buses indicates that safety mechanisms currently in operation are inadequate. There have been three such incidents in the past three months.
Back in October, 20 passengers died when a sleeper bus from Hyderabad burst into flames in Kurnool district of Andhra Pradesh after colliding with a motorcycle.
There was a similar pattern in that tragedy: A spark from the collision ignited the material used in the interiors; passengers were disoriented by the smoke and could not easily find their way to the exits due to the cramped interiors; safety features like hammers to break open the windows were missing; and the fire was intensified by a cargo of smartphones with lithium-ion batteries.
Long-distance bus travel in India is fraught with an array of hazards made worse by safety regulation that misses the mark.
Transport operators go to great lengths to dodge even the minimal regulation there is. It is well-known that luxury bus companies register their vehicles in Daman to take advantage of the lax standards applied there and operate with impunity elsewhere. Most of the safety standards governing luxury buses apply only to the chassis made by the manufacturer, but not to the custom-built body.
After buying the bare chassis, operators commission body-building workshops, which are not subject to road transport authority oversight, to soup it up for luxury overnight travel.
The workshops freely use flammable material for the interiors, such as non-fire-retardant aluminium with polyethylene cores, rexine seating and synthetic curtains. Even if certified as fire-retardant, they melt or emit carbon monoxide smoke, which causes disorientation and asphyxiation.
Other fire hazards commonly added on are large fuel tanks to obviate the need for a refuelling stop and heavy-duty air-conditioning.
The correct response to this problem is to expand the safety regimen to all parts of the supply chain. Not only must fire safety standards be applied to bus bodies as well as chassis, but passengers should also become a party to enforcement.
It must be made mandatory for operators to display each vehicle’s safety certification, stating the interior material used and the safety features available, on all online ticketing platforms, as well as the bus windscreen and the ticket itself.
Similarly, mandate the insurance industry to inspect every vehicle they insure and make it too costly for the operator to ignore safety measures.