FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2024
Alwyn M D'Sa
There has been a spate of road accidents in the year 2022 causing numerous fatalities and maiming so many people. In one recent major accident on the Canacona 4-lane road a speeding car hit the divider, crossed the carriageway and hit the oncoming car resulting in instant death of 3 members of a family and causing injury to 5 people.
Another peculiar phenomenon has been the accidents and the resultant deaths occurring on the State’s bridges and sometimes the vehicles and passengers falling into the watery grave. Over-speeding and reckless driving seems to be the main cause. Other factors are faulty road engineering, inadequate/missing signboards, vehicles driven under stress/lack of sleep, speeding by intrastate bus drivers, and so on.
Obtaining a driving licence in India is by far a child’s play. Many of the driving schools that have cropped up have trainers with barely any knowledge about the intricacies of driving a vehicle. If this is the calibre of driving school instructors, the end product of the driving schools, worst still in rural areas, how can one expect accidents not to happen on our streets which has one of the highest accident rates in the world. In the year 2021 alone 4 lakh accidents and 1.5 lakhs deaths occurred all over India. Many deaths could have been prevented by wearing safety gear like seat belts and helmets.
A small State like Goa has one of the highest number of vehicles per capita. Except for major new highways, most of the narrow village and internal roads can hardly cope up with the heavy flow of traffic. For many locals driving on the super highways is a new experience and some motorists are seen not keeping on to their lane, especially when there is a curvature on the roads. This can be dangerous as veering off ones lane and driving erratically can result in major collision between vehicles. Reflectors which have a dual purpose need to be placed along the lines to act as a deterrent.
In the advanced countries, including all of Gulf, getting a driving licence is a pretty tedious exercise and many candidates fail repeatedly and have to train again which includes driving skills itself, besides the knowledge about all road signs, safety training, traffic laws, etc. In spite of one of the heaviest road traffic in the advanced countries the incidence of accidents is a bare minimum. Another noteworthy phenomenon is complete absence of the use of horn which has become like a toy for Indian motorists.
It took the death of a famous Tata Scion for the Centre to be very serious about the wearing of seat belts by all passengers in a car and other safety gear to protect lives and limb. The concept of carrying minor children in the vehicles with special seats as is done in advanced countries though, may be difficult to implement in India given the cost factors and other logistical problems involved.
There is a lot of improvement and change that needs to be done in our country starting from the driving instructions itself, road engineering, pothole free roads, better signage, improved street lighting, clearance of cattle and animal menace and most important of all having responsible drivers in well maintained vehicles, and voluntarily adhering to safety procedures.
