The recent tragic accidents in Goa have sent shock waves and chill in the spine of many Goenkars. But no lessons learnt as yet. My deep sympathies to the parents, family members and friends, who have lost their dear ones in such accidents. These accidents are due to indiscipline, negligence, driving underage without licence, rash driving of others, taking the precious lives of others prematurely.
The young students from the South died in a tragic car accident at Verna while F. Daniel (MSFS) Valpoi was killed in a hit and run case. The blame is directed to the parents, the PWD engineers and traffic police, while others mourn and pray. First the parents need to own their responsibility for failure to control and curb their children’s desire for driving and riding vehicles without licence leading to such tragic deaths. You may have the licence but speed thrill to kill self and take the life of others.
When authorities introduced the Traffic Sentinel Schemes, some ill informed public started attacking these personnel. It was a good scheme to keep many violators in check for many traffic violations on the daily basis. Unless a spy is watching you, the violator will continue to kill people on the roads. In other countries there are speed/CCTV cameras installed by the traffic depts. to book such violators but our politicians and babus feel such implementation can wait for many more years so that many more lives can be claimed and families get ruined.
We Indians pretend to follow traffic rules only when we see a cop ahead or someone passerby gives you the light signal or makes sign that there are cops ahead. India is a signatory to the UN declaration to reduce accidents by 50% will not happen without all stake holders joining hands to create a road safety environment. Government feels higher fines will help to reduce accidents and bring in discipline on the road user, to some extent yes unless the cameras are in place or the traffic sentinel scheme should be the responsibility of every citizen to nab the violator and instead of fines he should be made to do community service. Repeated offence then should be imposed the heavy fine. If this is not done, Goa will soon be known as the road killer state and may get an award for which our Government can be proud of it unless they act now.
We are in the middle of economy crisis and such road accidents also add more to the mess. When the Govt. and public fail it is hoped that the religious people will step in. 3rd Sunday of November marks “The World Remembrance Day for road traffic accidents victims” should be celebrated in the Sunday mass liturgy maybe a spiritual awakening will help our road users to be safe. And finally the Govt should report the number of compensation settled in cases of road accidents so the public understand the amount of money is being spent by the Govt. because of accidents.
India and Goa cannot lose precious lives by butchering innocent pedestrians/drivers on the Goan roads. Statistics shows that 65% of the youth between 16 to 35 are the most killed. We can only pray that everyone gets involved in this mission ‘Free India from Road Accidents’. Yeh to Mere Mann ki Bhat.
