It’s road safety week starting Monday and the focus during this week is going to be on, well, safety and, as has been in the past, the use of helmets. This week the transport authorities are going to be stressing on the need for two-wheeler riders to wear helmets. The authorities have gone a step forward and from now on helmetless riders are going to be not only fined but will also have to attend a two-hour long counseling session where they will be explained the importance of wearing helmets.
Given the amount of attention that the authorities in Goa pay to the use of helmets it appears that this is the only traffic rule that Goan motorists break. Every few months there are drives undertaken to ensure that riders wear helmets. All year round, traffic cops standing on the roadside will stop every rider not wearing a helmet but overlook those wearing a helmet even if he or she is breaking the speed limit or some other traffic rule. While wearing a helmet is important, it won’t prevent accidents. It can at best save the rider who meets with an accident from damage to the head and brain. Yes it is important that the authorities ensure that helmets are worn by riders at all times, but the focus of the transport authorities and the traffic police should also be on minimizing accidents. Are we here looking at saving the life of a person who has met with an accident or are we trying to minimize accidents?
A speeding driver is a bigger risk to motorists and pedestrians than a helmetless rider. So too are drivers and riders who overtake on the left. So too are government vehicles, buses especially, that somehow never have their brake light working. That discipline has to be brought about in road users.
If counseling sessions don’t make people more conscious of obeying traffic rules, there is one move that should make motorists think twice before breaking rules and that is the decision of the Transport department to suspend the licence of traffic rule violators for a period of three months. While there may be many who would give this decision the thumbs down, and the rumblings have begun, given the indiscipline in Goa’s traffic, this could indeed be a best remedy. Paying a paltry fine is a petty punishment for breaking a traffic rule as the violator immediately returns to the driver’s seat, and sometimes continues breaking the rule.
But there’s more to road safety than wearing helmets and not breaking the laws and here is where the government has to step in. Yes, it has to give the taxpayers proper roads that are free from potholes and a pleasure to drive on. That hasn’t happened yet. Negotiating some of the State’s roads, especially in the monsoon, is akin to participating in an off-road rally. The roads are patched up after the rains subside and return to their almost war-torn conditions the following monsoon. There is either an engineering fault in the design and execution of the works, or there has been substandard material used in the construction. Hopefully, there will be some solution to this soon.
For the first time the State government is going to undertake a road safety audit of the national highways, state highways and major district roads across the State. This is long overdue. Since this is the first road safety audit being undertaken in the State, the government should ensure that all issues associated with road safety are identified and addressed so that there is improvement in the safety of road users. The team undertaking the audit should include highway safety engineers, highway design engineers, maintenance personnel, and law enforcement personnel. More importantly once the audit is completed and the report presented, the government should undertake to follow the recommendations made by the audit team. It is not uncommon in Goa for the government to contract a study and then take no action on the recommendations. It has happened in the past. Hopefully, this time it will be different and the government will give Goa better and safer roads.
