Pics: Ramesh Pandith
By Bhaskar K R
Additional Pics Supplied
Mangaluru, Jan 15: Road accidents mostly happen as a result of recklessness, carelessness, overconfidence and illiteracy, among others, exhibited by drivers, not respecting road safety regulations, jumping the red light, wrong overtaking especially on the highways, and in cities like Mangaluru, bigger truck drivers sometimes do not pay attention when other road users need to access their fair share of the road. Some local carriage vehicles are not even fit to be used to carry food stuffs, let alone human beings but they are being used each day to convey passengers from one end to another with impunity freely.
Again, most of the vehicles do not have workable speedometers but when they get on to the road, the drivers speed without knowing what kilometers per hour the bus or vehicle is moving at. What will be the result? Your guess is as good as mine. Overloading has become normal and acceptable to the extent that buses that should take limitedpassengers on a row now take limitless passengers instead. All these factors and more contribute to the many fatal accidents we witness on our roads daily.
Authorities such as the traffic police, traffic wardens, the National Road Safety Commission and other stakeholders have been working back and forth to bring sanity to our roads, unfortunately the canker still persists. It is time to have a human face approach towards reducing road accidents to the barest minimum.
As part of the Road Safety Week-2016, The Giving Tree Trust (GTT), a Mangaluru-based NGO in association with Vibrant Chevrolet, Kulur and Forum Fiza Mall has launched a series of programmes at different venues in the city. The programme includes awareness walk, display of accident vehicles, human chain, bike show, beach fest, streetplays etc. They have also distributed road safety stickers and calendars to the public.
The NGO has acquired the help of local politicians and the traffic police for effective management of accidents on the roads. The road safety management initiative is being carried out effectively by the NGO team through various rallies and events such as road safety and no honking programs supported by the police department and associated in collaboration with some reputed motor companies. On Thursday January 14, police commissioner Chandra Sekhar, DCP Sanjeeva Patil along with other police personnel held an awareness programme at Forum Fiza Mall in the presence of Sandeep Shetty of Forum Fiza Mall, wherein they urged the public to follow traffic rules strictly and warned that violation of traffic rules would result in suspension of driving licence. An awareness rally by students was also held the same evening.
Statistics indicate that abandoned and disabled vehicles contribute to more than 20 percentof fatal road accidents in India, road safety management is a shared responsibility, let us support the safety assistants of the road safety to win the war against road accidents in our beloved mother India. Please join us in our crusade against road accidents.