A 21-year-old man died of injuries when he slipped and banged his head against a bus while trying to board another in the middle of the road on Monday, police said.

The accident occurred close to Dolna Day School, near the crossing of Rashbehari Connector and KN Sen Road in Kasba around 9.40am.

“A bus on route 18/1 overtook a bus on route 3C/1. Abinash Shaw tried to board the 18/1 bus from behind the 3C/1 bus in the middle of the road. But he slipped and banged his head against the 3C/1 bus,” an officer said.

Shaw, a resident of BB Chatterjee Road in Kasba Rathtala, was declared dead at Ruby hospital.

Eyewitnesses have told cops that he was bleeding profusely when he was being taken to the hospital.

The bus on 18/1 route was seized and the driver arrested, the police said. He has been booked for rash driving and causing death by negligence.

Last Tuesday, a 17-year-old boy was run over by a bus near the Howrah bridge. On Friday, a packed private bus had hit a pillar of East-West Metro opposite the main gate of the Central Park fairground in Salt Lake, leaving many passengers injured.

A large number of bus accidents happen when drivers stop in the middle of the road to pick up or drop off passengers or try to overtake other buses on the same route, the police said.

While the number of fatal accidents in the city dropped to 267 in 2019 from 294 in 2018, the number of bus accidents went up to 497 in 2019 from 470 in 2018.

Despite the government’s “Safe Drive Save Life” campaign, drivers of private and government buses have often been accused of reckless driving, overtaking, jumping signals and picking up or dropping off passengers in the middle of the road.

The police have often blamed the “commission system”, which determines a driver’s salary, for accidents involving private buses.

“A driver’s salary depends on the number of passengers. Two buses on the same route keep racing and trying to overtake one another to pick up more passengers,” a traffic police officer said.