‘Bada Hathi on Chota Hathi’; Tata Ace transporting Elephant is both amusing and dangerous: WATCH Video

While animals on Indian roads are a common sighting, an Elephant being carried on a vehicle half the size of it is a major safety hazard for travellers as well as the elephant itself.

Image for representation

It's a known fact that Indian roads are some of the most dangerous roads to drive your vehicle, or even for the pedestrians. While a number of factors contribute to the lack of safety standards on the Indian roads, one major factor is lack of driving etiquettes and basic sense of driving. In one such incident, a small commercial vehicle driver was seen transporting a big elephant at the back of the Tata Ace, on an attached trailer. The video of the mammoth animal being transported on a small vehicle like Tata Ace has been recorded by another person travelling in his car and shared on Instagram.

Interestingly, Tata Ace is marketed in the Indian market as 'Chota Hathi' and another 'Hathi' being transported on the Tata Ace has generated a lot of memes. But fun aside, transporting such a heavy animal is not only dangerous for the animal, but for everyone around and driving behaviour like this makes the Indian roads so perilous and challenging for everyone to travel on. 

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While the location of the video is not known, given the ornaments on the Elephant, it can be deduced that the video is from South India. Also the under construction pillars can be seen highlighting the development of either a flyover or metro. What's most important is that the highway is a busy one, with lots of vehicles plying on the same route as the elephant on the trailer.

The trailer and vehicle size is very small to the elephant, who is standing on the trailer and there's no proper harness to secure the animal. In such a situation, one small mistake can cause massive disaster. That small mistake can be hard braking, sharp turn or high speed driving over uneven road, all of which can lead to the animal easily falling off the vehicle.

Tata Ace load capacity

Tata Ace is a competent and most successful small commercial vehicle in the Indian market, but has a limited load carrying capacity of 750 kg. On the other hand, an elephant can be as heavy as 5,000 kg and won't fit the Tata Ace itself due to its small size. While transporting an Elephant is not unusual as India has many domesticated elephants, they are usually transported in heavy and large commercial vehicles with proper cargo space. Such a huge elephant travelling without proper covering, harness and the of the vehicle itself raises seriour safety concerns.