Media Release

Mangaluru, Jul 21: The month-long 'Mangalore for no honking' campaign has come to an end. With different events spread over the past 30 days, ranging from a bike rally, drawing competitions in schools, mall awareness programmes, presentations in colleges and a signature drive to be held on July 21 at City Centre Mall, this may be a small step in trying to drive home the idea that we need to be street smart, when it comes to sharing the road and not just blowing our trumpets at any small inconvenience.

This may be in a nascent stage and it will definitely be a long way before the citizens of Mangaluru, start to realise that while we can "do as the Romans do when in Rome", but once we are back on home turf, its a virtual free for all. As S Murugan, city police chief, Mangaluru city traffic police (M C T P) clearly stated - "While enforcement is one of the means to discipline motorists, the problem will not be addressed until and unless motorists develop a culture of driving.”

With this in mind, Giving Tree Trust, a registered non profit organisation, together with the United Bikers of Mangaluru - a virtual group of the many motorcycle clubs of Mangaluru, interested in taking up social causes through their network, decided to roll out presentations for colleges, where the youth, who form the prominent people of tomorrow, stand at high risk of taking to the streets on high powered vehicles, sadly without proper guidance - in many cases. Instead of just concentrating on the honking Issue, it was decided to look at the bigger picture of road safety awareness and the evils of road rage, that eventually includes unnecessary honking. While many would argue that they do not use a vehicle or that they are not at fault in honking unnecessarily, the purpose of these programmes was to drive the idea at a grass-root level in taking some learning home, which hopefully would be shared with their loved ones, family and friends.

Here are a few facts -

• In India, there is one road accident every 80 seconds.
• In India, there is one casualty every 10 minutes.
• 40.2% of accidental deaths are accounted from road accidents.
• 93% of all accidents are caused due to human factors.
• 80% crashes involve driver inattention within 3 minutes before the event.
• 30% talking on phone, 30% dialing phone, 28% rear end collision.
• Two-wheeler riders are 30 times more likely to be killed as compared to a car driver.
• Two and three-wheelers contribute to 32% of casualties.
• Death is more common in the 20-30 age group. 72% of the deaths among the 2 wheeler riders are in this age group.

And road rage, which has become the norm of the day, reflects the violent behaviour of ourselves when on the roads, the factors of which lead up to this being, carelessness, recklessness and rising tempers.

Therefore with these presentations that were carried out for St Agnes degree college students, Canara degree college students, SDM law college and even for the employees and cab drivers of Mphasis, there is a glimmer of hope that similar to how it is done in the metros of Mumbai and Bengaluru, the concept of road safety would be introduced as part of the curriculum to the children in schools.