Accident Statistics for Workers of Electronic City, Bangalore

I know that one of India's foremost software companies - let's call it W - has a big campus at Electronic City (ECity), on Hosur Road, in southern Bangalore. Thousands of people work there. I also know that ever since this W company started to move its operations to ECity, it has lost the life of at least one employee - perhaps more - every year in accidents on Hosur Road alone. That is not a small number. That is a grave (no pun intended) statistic for a company of any size!

This makes me wonder about the following questions:

1. Exactly how many employee lives has W lost in accidents, on the way to and from office, on Hosur Road?

2. How many employees of W have only been hurt, but not lost their lives in accidents on Hosur Road? (I almost never hear about the no-fatal accidents).

3. Repeat the above two questions for W's employees encountering accidents to and from work, in other parts of the city, i.e., accidents which don't happen on Hosur Road.

4. Repeat all of the above questions for the hundreds, may be even thousands, of other companies which have setup shop in ECity and whose employees travel to and from work at all hours of the day and night.

I am sure the statistics would be staggering. It would be very revealing and explosive if some newspaper gathered these statistics, interpreted them in a proper way and published the results. I don't have the time or resources to do so myself.

If Bangalore is the technology capital of India, ECity is undoubtedly the technology headquarters of Bangalore. There are hundreds of companies here and lakhs of people who work here. The rush hour traffic to and from this place is a nightmare. For most people, the commute to their offices in ECity is a minimum of one hour journey in crowded, indisciplined, reckless and dangerous Bangalore traffic. For people riding two-wheelers, it is a literal deathzone. Even people in cars are not safe and could be easily crushed by the countless trucks and buses plying on this road. People in buses are not totally safe either. In fact, the last employee of W company to die on Hosur Road was travelling in a bus. Such is the notoriety of Hosur Road.

Incidentally, in the 90's, the condition of this road was much neglected by the government. Repeated complaints by the tech companies in this area produced no results. Finally, frustrated employees of Infosys and other tech companies, took up road repair tools and got down on the road themselves, "to repair it". It was a symbolic protest, but it finally made the government to sit up and take notice. However, as usual in India, each new development effort undertaken on this road is too late. By the time any development activity is completed, the volume of traffic would have increased manifold and neutralized the benefits of such development.

The result is that today's technology workers who set out every morning towards Electronic City in Bangalore, face an equivalent or greater danger to their lives as compared to a caveman in prehistoric times who sets out with primitive weapons into a dangerous and hostile jungle to get food.