Showcasing why the footboard travel has been a menace for the students and the need for implementing strict measures to curb such travel, a report has shockingly revealed that Tamil Nadu has lost 28 students in the past eight years due to footboard travel. The dreadful tally has come to light from the transport department's reply to a query that was raised under the Right to Information Act (RTI). 

In its reply, the transport department has said that such accidents of falling from footboard had happened mostly in the government buses. On average, every year four to six deaths of school students had occurred due to footboard travel. Chennai alone has recorded the deaths of 16 students due to footboard travel in the last four years. With this tally, the city has reported more number of such deaths in the state. 

The reports say that though footboard travel is a menace, such incidents have been recurring in Chennai as at least 70 per cent of 3,300 buses in the city don't have automatic doors. The city has been witnessing visuals where the students are fond of such travel in the midst of prevailing apathy among the government authorities. Such fashion of travel has been a cause of concern among the general public, but it is becoming rampant. 

School and college students were the ones who mostly prefer footboard travel and though the city's public transport administration has installed a measure to prevent the accidents, the scale of such incidents is visible at every corner of the city. In 2021, the Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC), Chennai, has come up with a technique that might prevent people from slipping from the footboards of buses.

However, the absence of such a mechanism in every bus has kept the risk alive and several social activists have expressed despair that many students are performing such heroic activities to get a social media reach and attention by putting their lives at risk. By citing that these students are not being punished, which prompts them to commit footboard travel again, the activists urge the government to ensure that all government buses are equipped with automatic doors and mechanisms to curb the footboard deaths.