Life is getting busy; Roads are transformed to Expressways; Cars are evolved with powerful engines; Speedometers are touching more than 100 Km/Hour. All are OK if the life continues, but all are meaningless if the lifeline breaks instead of timely car brakes.
I daily travel on Noida-Greater Noida Expressway to my workplace. It’s a 25 Km, eight-lane highway connecting Noida and Greater Noida. The Expressway is wide enough to allow the drivers apply some extra force on their car accelerator. Accidents on this road is a very common news. I have seen many and thanked to God “Today it was not my turn!!”. And this thanking note is not only from me but from all of them who daily travel on this root. But still everyday we find 20 people moving by a 10 seater vehicle, still people drive in wrong direction, still bikers move without helmet and car drivers without seat-belt; and this happens only in India 🙄 .
Ministry of road transport and highways, Government of India, presented a report on 2011, where the data related to accidents were extensively analyzed and graphs were plotted as above. It shows the continuous growth in number of accidents and the number of deaths year by year. The Pi-chat segregates the reasons for road accidents. From the chart it is very clear that the fault of driver is the reason, over-dominating the others. If all drivers in our country will be careful about the road safety and obey the traffic rules, then at-least we can hope, the following trend can drop up to 50% in coming years. Following are some must DO’s and DON’Ts for the drivers to maintain the road safety:
DO’s
1. Wear Seat Belt
2. Follow traffic rules and traffic lights
3. Complete the timely servicing of your vehicle
4. Allow enough room to the pedestrians and bicyclists on the road
5. Maintain safe distance from other vehicles while driving
DON’TS
1. Don’t Drink and Drive
2. Don’t cross speed limit
3. Don’t use high volume music inside car while driving
4. Don’t use mobile phones while driving
5. Don’t drive on wrong side
6. Don’t overtake from wrong side
Steps Government Should take to improve the condition
1. Introduction of road safety education through workshops, seminars and short term course in schools, colleges and organizations
2. Frequent broadcasting of “Importance of road safety” through short films in TV, Radios and Internet
3. Strict evaluation of driving skills before issuing the driving license to anyone
4. Strict action should be taken while someone breaks the traffic rule
5. Traffic police should be honest enough to accomplish the responsibility of the job (I had a bad experience when a Police man driving his car in wrong direction blocked our way in Greater Noida and finally we had to pull our back gear to give him the space to continue driving in wrong direction)
This post is a contribution towards the road safety campaign NSDF (Nissan Safety Driving Forum) initiated by NISSAN. The campaign is supported by Indiblogger, an Indian blogging community. The Nissan Motor Co., Ltd., conducts the Nissan Safety Driving Forum (NSDF) in India as part of its safety driving promotion activities. The program began as an annual activity in 2012. With the concept of Safety begins with me, Nissan drives home the message that road safety and etiquette is every driver’s responsibility and can not be taken lightly.
Before some-days I watched a nice video “My Husband made me a Prostitute” shared by Mission Sharing Knowledge to spread the awareness among people by a campaign #DontDrinkAndDrive. The short film is so touching that I would love to embed the video in this post.
Please understand!!! Driving on road is not like car racing game on computer where you have extra lives to continue and a restart button.
Drive safe… Somebody is waiting for YOU at home…