PANJIM: In last three months, ending March, 1,143 cases of road mishap including fatal and non-fatal category were reported in Goa resulting deaths of 79 people including 53 two-wheeler riders, revealing the fact that various road safety awareness campaigns and exercises being taken up to minimize the cases of mishaps, especially those resulted out of two-wheelers on national state highway as well as city streets have failed to check the graph of road mishaps.
Goa, the only State to have its own State Road Safety Week, has been by large successful in declining the number of road accidents- fatal and non-fatal and deaths resulted out of it, since 2010, when the Safety Week was first introduced in the State under the guidance of Transport Minister Sudin Dhavalikar. However, four years down the line, the campaigns have failed to have any of its impact on the youth -from the age group of 18-34, the accidents and death graph that went on increasingly substantially.
As per the statistics, in the year 2010, total 4,570 accidents were reported with 311 deaths that included 179 two-wheeler riders. In 2011, the total number of accidents and deaths reduced to 4,558 and 305, however the number of two-wheeler riders who died continued to be constant-170.
In 2012 there were 4,312 accidents with total 217 deaths, with 167 involving two-wheeler riders. The number of deaths rose to 261 in 2013, when State witnessed 4,291 accidents. However, the death of two-wheeler riders continued to be same.
“Since the time the awareness campaigns have been launched, there has been decline in number of accidents and deaths, despite the fact that 70,000 vehicles get added to vehicular population annually. However, we have failed to get youth convinced about the safety of their lives,” Director Transport Arun Desai told HERALD.
The Transport Department claims that for the past four years, it has, with the help of the Goa Traffic Police making constant efforts to create awareness amongst the youth either through special drives or holding lectures on road safety in colleges and higher secondary schools. The department has its own experts in form of Motor Vehicle Inspectors (MVI), Assistant MVI and Additional Director Transport, who deliver lectures on various measures to be adopted while driving, the laws, and the implications of accidents to students.
“These are qualified people with knowledge on road accidents, safety and laws. They visit each and every educational institute within their jurisdiction and deliver lectures,” Desai said, adding “People pretend to wear helmets to fool cops and RTOs without thinking that sometimes it can fool them too”. Ever increasing number of vehicles, rash driving and lack of traffic sense are the prime causes of road accidents.
On an average, 70,000 vehicles get added on State’s roads which include 42,000 two-wheelers. The State currently has 7 lakh two-wheelers of the total 10 lakh vehicular population.
