The unfortunate death of India’s leading industrialist in a road accident, once again brought out the ugly truth that our roads are not safe. While we have come to accept this as a way of life, sometimes we do sit up and take notice. Making rear seat belts mandatory or asking cars in Mumbai to “Belt up in the rear seat” is not going to make our roads safer.
We will not dwell too much on the directive to ignore pillions who not wear helmets despite the rule because a minister has decided so. Too many must be calling him to talk to the policeman.
The chief minister has asked the DySP Traffic (South) to prepare a road safety management plan. This is really good, but why a physical open forum for suggestions? An email ID where concerned citizens can send their suggestions is more appropriate today. The other impractical aspect is the time line; the plan has to be implemented in a month, really?
The good thing is traffic safety is on the table. What can we do about it? The low hanging fruit is the infrastructure, with the rains gone, the PWD can start covering the potholes that cause the accidents. The PWD (Roads Division) does not have road engineering expertise.
Let me support this claim. First, the rumbler strips are installed to slow traffic on main carriageway and prevent accidents with incoming traffic from side roads. The strips should be on the side roads. That would mean less estimate as side roads are smaller. There is a rumbler strip, on the slope coming up from Panjim, just before GMC, heavy vehicles have to slow down to cross the rumbler and then have difficult picking up speed, thus causing a traffic jam.
Take the Margao-Panjim-Ponda tri junction where the Ponda road meets the Panjim-Margao Highway. It is a mess and an accident waiting to happen. I did try to explain the confusion but seeing is believing. Was the Atal Setu just designed and placed there? Did they not foresee this? But you have PWD Chief Engineer, roads division, must not be driving for sure, or just waiting to retire.
It is common knowledge that our road signage is not the best. The airport road has speed limits of 100, 30 and 70, the new Panjim-Margao has 40 60 and 50 and then nothing. Policemen wait with speed guns to catch you. In addition to that, overtaking from the left is again very common and seemingly acceptable practice. The main issue is the commercial vehicles hog the right lane and while the road can now handle faster traffic, the trucks which are 9 out of 10 times overloaded do not have the power to travel at speeds exceeding 50-60 for long duration. Thus they block the right lanes, forcing the faster moving cars to overtake from the left.
This needs two responses, one, we must act against slow moving traffic in fast lanes, the union Minster of Transport is mulling a subsidy to scrap old commercial vehicles. Second, get the panel to study and put proper signage.
We have to agree that unless we look at road safety as an “attitude” we are going nowhere, sadly. Let me explain a little more so that if we agree we can begin with ourselves and make a difference.
Imagine this, its 7.30 am on a school day. Stand at any cross road near a school or simply near a school. You will notice that any number of traffic rules are broken as a matter of fact. Parents come to drop 2/3 kids on a single bike. Most of the time the parent is not wearing a helmet or seat belt. Rickshaws with 10 kids is also the norm. The riders and drivers have no issue driving on the wrong side to avoid U turns as they are in a hurry. Parking is haphazard because everyone wants to stop in front of school gate, oblivious to the fact that the vehicle is causing a jam. What is important is the convenience of the kids, he has had to walk a few steps less and he is late. Where signals are in place, parents just do not notice them and just zip past a red light. You can add other violations by seeing for yourself.
You will ask, why am I focused on school kids, parents have enough of headaches and this one area they can save a few minutes should not be highlighted. There are other traffic violations, right through the day, wrong side driving, breaking signals, no seat belts/helmets, etc. Why pick on poor parents?
The reason is simple, as long as we tolerate this daily morning traffic regulation breaking ritual, we are doomed to never having our roads safe for road users. The reason is simple, these little kids are learning by example, it is OK to break traffic rules, the cycle will continue. If we feel we need a change then parents/schools will have to think differently, they will have to make the change and the best motivation is their child. If the roads are safer, their child has a better chance of reaching home every day. Safety begins at home.
In summary, to make our roads safer we need a two-pronged approach, proper road engineering at the government and PWD level. Changing attitudes to make following traffic rules important at the school level. If we do this, we can make a difference to the next generation.
(The author prefers to write rather than chat in a balcao)
