Mangalore: Accidents in City - Time to Ban Parking on Roadsides?
Brijesh Garodi
Daijiworld Media Network - Mangalore (BG)
Mangalore, Jun 16: Accidents within the city limits have become a common phenomenon of late. Though it is not a new thing, it is matter of concern that there are new reasons why fatal accidents take place on the city roads, where speed of vehicles is relatively less.
One cannot forget the two accidents that took place in the city on June 4 and 6, which claimed two precious lives. One was near Milagres Church, an accident between a bike and a bus, on June 4 that led to the death of Yashwin Shetty from Shaktinagar.
The other one was near Shivbagh, on June 6, an accident between a bike and a lorry, that killed Eustuse Mendonca from Kulshekar.
If we compare the two accidents, a glaring similarity stares us in the face.
Eyewitnesses in both cases said that the accidents were due to other vehicles parked beside the road. In both cases, it can be observed that the roads are very narrow and in addition to that, the vehicles are allowed to park along the sides of the roads.
When there are vehicles parked beside the road, it is quite obvious that the driver’s attention is diverted towards the vehicles and he changes direction to avoid colliding with the parked vehicle. At the same time he will not be aware of the vehicles on the other side, which in turn leads to accident, like in these two cases.
Traffic police seems to be least bothered about this issue. At least with these sorts of incidents taking place, police should take measures and designate such narrow roads as no parking zones. This is specially needed on concreted roads, which have dividers and no extra space on the sides, and where provision is made for only two vehicles to pass on the same side at a time. The need of the hour is to make elaborate arrangements for parking in the busy and narrow roads in the city, but the million dollor question is of availability of space and willingness of the authorities to implement such a rule.