However, today parents fear for their children when they leave home, with harm awaiting at almost every corner. Though the city is reeling back to normalcy after the devastating road accident by a woman driver, nothing much seems to have changed with the drunk driver still free, in possession of her driving licence and the government has not put in any emergency measures to prevent recurrence of such accidents, which nearly claimed the lives of two youth.
Neither anti alcohol enforcement drive nor identity or licence check nor speed limits or crack down on over speeding have been put in place after the devastating accident. But as it happens, most government departments merely react to events instead of preventing accidents. The utter failure of the Road Transport department, traffic police, PWD and local bodies to prevent road accidents, makes one wonder if they are awake to the reality that road accidents claim more lives than most diseases in Goa.
Almost every road in Goa is a death trap. The deep uncovered gutters; digging of roads without proper signage; poor alignment of highways, city and village roads; badly constructed speed breakers, stray cattle and badly lit roads are six of the biggest death traps on Goan roads. Besides there are no uniform shoulders to take the vehicle off the road in an emergency or if one loses control. Sharp turns, narrow roads which have failed to keep pace with the vehicle population; huge potholes; lack of a driving etiquette and utter failure at enforcement with strict fines make the life of road users a nightmare.
For decades, concerned departments and local bodies have shown themselves as impotent in controlling road cattle menace, which claims many lives. No amount of budget allocation for cattle ponds and powers to impound stray cattle to local bodies has rid Goa of this grave threat to road users.
One of the most effective ways of reducing road accidents is proper effective road dividers. The road dividers in a city like Panjim, especially along the Dayanand Bandodkar road where the drunk woman driver went on the wrong side, are the worst. The credit for this goes solely to the CCP, which removed the two feet dividers put by the PWD, and replaced them with small dividers which easily allow drunk or speeding drivers to cross over to the wrong side and claim innocent lives.
Hoards of pedestrians cross all along the DB road at will, some busy on cellphones, with no respect for zebra crossings, risking their own lives and those of others. Barricades have to be erected all along the city dividers and pedestrian crossings should be only a designated points as done in New Delhi, Chennai where large populations are effectively controlled. The road dividers should be of at least two feet high.
Similarly all footpaths should be at least a foot above the road level so that vehicles can neither park on the footpath nor run over pedestrians in case of rash driving.
Goa has one of the highest cases of road accidents in the country compared to its population. The PWD Minister, who has shown a penchant for divisive politics and needless controversies, should along with the chief minister and concerned ministers liaise with Central Road Research Institute, form a dedicated inter department team from traffic police, transport department, PWD and local governments and thrash out concerted solutions to crack down on drunk driving, align roads, footpaths, install effective dividers, correct badly constructed speed breakers and launch a concerted campaign of road user education and enforcement, and ensure that road related deaths in Goa are drastically brought down, to make life safer on roads.
