Accident, Medical & Emergency Protocol

Emergency numbers

In any road, medical or safety emergency, call 112 first. Then call our line on +91 99966 69190. Our drivers are instructed to call 112 and our control point immediately and to render such assistance as they are able. Compensation under the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988, including through a Motor Accident Claims Tribunal, is independent of our terms and is not limited by them.

112 comes first for a plain reason: it is one number that reaches police, fire and ambulance together, and the operator on the line works out which of the three the situation actually needs and sends it. Nobody at the scene has to decide, in the middle of an emergency, whether this is a police matter, a medical one, or both at once. Calling our line straight after does not compete with that call or slow it down. It runs alongside it: 112 is what gets a professional response moving, and everything we do once we know of an incident, arranging a replacement vehicle, reaching your emergency contact, notifying our insurer, follows from that call rather than standing in for it.

• 112, the national emergency number: police, fire or ambulance, from anywhere in the country.
• 1033, the National Highways Helpline, for a breakdown or an accident anywhere on the highway network.
• 1363, the Ministry of Tourism’s tourist helpline.
• +91 99966 69190, our own line, at any hour.

All four are worth keeping somewhere you can find quickly rather than only on this page, because a phone at low battery in the back of a moving car is not the moment to be searching for a number.

What our driver is trained to do

Every driver we put on the road is trained to do the same things in the same order, so what happens in the first few minutes does not depend on how calm he manages to stay. The order itself is deliberate and it is not arbitrary: it puts the safety of everyone at the scene, our driver, your party and anyone else nearby, ahead of every other step, because an accident that has already happened is exactly the kind of thing a following vehicle can run into if the scene is not made visible and safe first. Only once that is done does attention turn to who is hurt, and only once that is known do the two calls go out, with first aid coming last because dispatching real help sooner matters more than anything a driver without medical training can do with his hands in the meantime.

Stop safely and put on the hazard lights.

A vehicle stopped in the flow of traffic is itself a hazard, so the first job is to stop it being one. Hazard lights buy the seconds a following vehicle needs to see the stop before it is on top of it.

Secure the scene as far as he can.

A warning triangle where the vehicle carries one, and traffic waved past if it is safe to do so. This protects everyone standing near the vehicle, our driver, your party and anyone from another vehicle, before attention turns to who is hurt. A second collision at the same spot is a real risk, which is why this step is not skipped even when somebody is plainly injured.

Check who is hurt, without moving anyone who may have a back or neck injury.

This decides what 112 needs to be told and how urgently. It is done without moving anyone, because moving a person with a possible spinal injury is how a survivable injury becomes a permanent one. Our drivers are trained to check whether somebody is conscious and breathing, not to diagnose, and to leave anything past that to the paramedics who are trained for it.

Call 112.

Once the scene is as safe as it can be made and it is clear who needs help, this call goes out immediately, with the location described as precisely as he can manage.

Call our line on +91 99966 69190.

This is the call that starts everything on our side, a replacement vehicle, your emergency contact, our insurer, and it follows 112 rather than standing in for it.

Give first aid to the extent he is trained for, and no further.

Every driver carries basic first aid training and is told not to attempt anything past it. Well-meant help from somebody who is not qualified can do more harm than doing nothing at all until paramedics arrive, and our drivers are trained to know that line and to stay on the right side of it.

What happens next

Once the scene is safe, the call to our line starts three things on our side, and they run together rather than one after another.

We arrange a replacement vehicle, so the rest of your trip is not lost.

A replacement means an accident or a breakdown that was not your doing does not also cost you the rest of your journey. We work out what is actually needed, a vehicle of the right size reaching you in time to matter for whatever is left of the trip, whether that is a two hour local booking or a multi-day outstation one, and get it moving. Where a trip genuinely cannot continue that day, because of how serious the incident was or where it happened, we would rather tell you plainly than promise a vehicle we cannot get to you in time, and work out with you what happens instead.

Where you gave us an emergency contact at booking, we call that person.

This is one of the reasons we ask for a contact when you book rather than only after something has gone wrong: in an actual emergency you may be hurt, occupied with the police or a hospital, or simply not reachable for a while, and that is exactly the moment a contact is most useful and least convenient to collect. Having it on file already means the call can be made the moment it is needed rather than chased down from a stranger at the scene.

We notify our insurers, so a claim can be opened without you having to do it yourself from a hospital or a police station.

Insurance intimation carries its own time limit inside the policy, and starting it the moment we know of an incident is what keeps that limit from becoming your problem on top of everything else you are already dealing with.

A medical emergency on a trip

The same two numbers apply where the emergency is medical rather than a collision, a passenger taken seriously ill or hurt in some other way: 112 first, then our line.

We do not keep a fixed list of hospitals to send you to, because the right one is whichever is nearest to where you actually are at the time, and that changes with every trip and every stretch of road. Our driver’s job is to get you there, or to wherever an ambulance can reach you fastest, and to stay with you or with the vehicle as you or whoever is treating you asks.

Past that point, what he does is whatever is actually useful rather than a fixed script: staying with the vehicle if it needs to remain at the scene, or going with you to the hospital if that matters more, and keeping our office and your emergency contact updated as things develop. He carries the vehicle’s papers, registration, insurance and permit, and produces them to the police or the hospital if either asks.

Insurance

Compulsory third-party motor insurance is maintained under Section 146 of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988, and our fleet additionally carries comprehensive and passenger cover.

These are three different kinds of protection and each one covers a different person. Third-party cover is for anyone outside the vehicle, another driver, a pedestrian, the owner of a wall or a parked car, who is injured or whose property is damaged because of our vehicle. It is compulsory under law for exactly that reason: a vehicle on the road without it could injure a stranger and leave nothing to answer with. Comprehensive cover is for the vehicle itself, damage from an accident, fire, theft or several other named risks, so a single incident does not put that car out of service for good. Passenger cover is for you and anyone travelling with you, the people actually inside the vehicle when something goes wrong, which is the one group compulsory third-party insurance does not automatically reach.

Passenger cover works alongside your right to claim compensation through a Motor Accident Claims Tribunal. One does not reduce the other, and neither is capped by anything in our booking terms.

Where your accident needs a claim, we open it from our side as soon as we know of it. What we ask you for is usually a copy of the FIR, where one was filed, and your own account of what happened while it is still fresh.

The account matters because memory of an accident fades quickly, and the inconsistencies between what is said at the time and what is recalled weeks later are exactly what a slow or disputed claim is made of. Telling us what happened as soon as you reasonably can protects your own claim as much as ours.

Compensation under the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988, including through a Motor Accident Claims Tribunal, is independent of our terms and is not limited by them.

Documentation after an incident

After an accident we help with the paperwork: filing or following up an FIR where the police need one, and intimating our insurer within the time their policy requires. Where the hospital opens a medico-legal case, that is between the hospital and the police, and we pass on what we know as we learn it.

An FIR is the police’s own record of what was reported and when, and it matters for reasons that go past our insurance. It is the document a court, a Tribunal or an insurer will ask for if there is ever a dispute about what actually happened, and it protects you as much as it protects us. Not every incident needs one, a minor scrape with no injury and no disagreement usually does not, but where the law requires it or either side wants it on record, we do not leave it to chance.

Insurance intimation has a time limit written into the policy, and missing it is one of the few things that can genuinely weaken a claim that would otherwise have gone through cleanly. That is why we treat it as a job for the moment we learn of an incident rather than something to get to once the dust has settled: a claim intimated on time is a claim the insurer has no procedural reason to question.

Your emergency contact

We ask for an emergency contact when you book so that, if something happens on the trip and you are not in a position to make the call yourself, there is somebody we already have your permission to ring. Giving us one is your choice, and without it we have nobody to call besides you.

Asking at booking rather than afterwards is deliberate. In an actual emergency you may be hurt, occupied with the police or a hospital, or simply not reachable for a while, and that is precisely the moment a contact is most useful and least convenient to collect. Asking in advance means the detail is already on file and ready to use the moment it is needed, rather than something we are trying to get out of you, or out of a stranger at the scene, while everyone’s attention is on more urgent things.

It is used for exactly one purpose: to let somebody who cares about you know what has happened, as soon as we know it ourselves. We do not use it for anything else, and it plays no part in your booking or your fare.

Vehicle recovery and your onward journey

The vehicle is recovered by us, not left for you to arrange. Where your trip is not finished, we bring in a replacement so the rest of the journey goes ahead.

Recovering the vehicle is our responsibility once the scene is clear and the police, if they were involved, have finished with it. You are not left standing beside a damaged car working out who to call for a tow. Where the trip is unfinished, our first question on the call is not about the vehicle, it is about what you still need to get to and by when, because a replacement is only useful if it is the right size for what is left of the trip and reaches you in time to matter. The vehicle follows from that answer rather than the other way round.

Where a trip genuinely cannot continue as planned that day, we would rather say so plainly and work out with you what happens instead than let you wait on a promise we cannot keep.

After the event

We look at what happened after every incident: whether our driver’s response could have been quicker, whether the route or the schedule played a part, and whether this protocol itself needs to change. Where it does, we change it.

Reviewing every incident is what keeps this protocol describing what our drivers actually do.