U-turn man who halted congestion

An engineer's simple roundabout design transformed Kovai's choked roads, inspiring state-wide adoption, and proving that small ideas can lead to major urban-traffic change

- ARAVIND RAJ @ Coimbatore

IN today's cities, blaring horns, restless drivers, and endless queues at traffic lights have become the unrelenting rhythm of daily life-gridlock and rising accidents reduced to a grim background hum that everyone grumbles about, yet almost no one tries to silence.

While most of us race to the office, shaving corners, jumping reds, or pushing the pedal harder just to steal back a few minutes, one man has chosen a quieter kind of defiance.

Every morning, without applause or announcement, he steps into the chaos - not to conquer the clock, but to rewrite the rules of the road itself.

G Manuneethi, a 60-year-old civil engineer from Theni, didn't just ease traffic congestion but also transformed the way a city moves. Widely known today as 'The U-Turn Man,' his simple yet groundbreaking ideas have turned major roads across TN into signal-free corridors.

Manuneethi's story did not begin with a grand plan but with a decadeslong journey shaped by observation, persistence, and an engineer's instinct to simplify complexity. His approach first captured widespread attention in 2021, when Coimbatore was wrestling with severe traffic snarls and a worrying rise in accidents. As the first officer appointed to the newly formed Road Safety Wing in the city, he found himself with little more than a blank slate and an urgent mandate: to find something that worked.