Our highways and byways are jumpy roads. It is a rock and roll ride on our motorway due to potholes. It is a good shake from head to foot.
Many riders and drivers think that traffic rules are for fools. Some think that accidents always happen to others, never to them. It is always somebody else’s tragedy until it happens to them.
Two-wheelers squeeze through narrowest available space by twisting and turning to overtake cars from right or left and thus disrupt road discipline. The young ones who have just learnt how to change the gears and drive vehicles, skip traffic circles, take foolish risks and speed on the wrong way down the one-way street, unaware of traffic rules. They, trying to outsmart others on the road, behave as if the whole road belongs to them alone. They even speed-fly, six feet above the road, as if the devil is after them or they after the devil. Bus drivers run, like race course horses, just to collect more and more passengers at every bus stop. Sometimes they even dash pedestrians knocking them by the side of the road, even into the fields.
According to the proverb, ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child’ when applied to unruliness on road, the erring two-wheeler riders and bus drivers should get the fear of punishment of cancelling licence or imposition of heavy fine. The fright would reduce accidental rivers of blood that flow on our roads.
Potholes are depressions in the ground; which are civic carelessness of duty. Potholes are one of the reasons from which many suffer minor and major injuries and get maimed and get transported to eternal life in the next world. But often, it is said, that such accidents are dismissed as ‘death due to negligence of the victim’. The blame is put on the rider by saying the dandy-driver was covering his ears with mobile at the time of the accident. Many say that it is the usual practice, to avoid the blame on the contractors, engineers and other responsible officials. So that those who have shared ill-gotten gains actually move free and are not held accountable. I
These ‘man-made’ tragedies caused by potholes can be stopped in future by fining the responsible authority and blacklisting errant contractors for doing the work imperfectly. But many say that errant contractors are found to get fresh contracts which are an achievement by backdoor secret activity. We live in an environment where the police overlook traffic indiscipline; thus good drivers turn bad by imitating the wrong ones. According to Peter Principle, almost every policeman in the police force has risen to his level of incompetence; they stand and stare like cows on roads by blowing one or two whistles or jerking their hands this way and that like the leave of the coconut trees, in the breeze. People take advantage of mildness and so accidents happen.
It is said, “To see the wrong and not to correct it, is want of courage.”
May, God give our courageous policemen who will clear the indiscipline on the road. Good deeds are valued when they are done at the right time.
