Its time for zero tolerance to curb nuisance!

Practically every day the newspapers report of road accidents where school/college students usually are the victims of their own fault. Worst is to read if the victims succumb to road injuries. Really dreadful! God knows the trauma the families of the deceased have to pass through.

Yes, the context of this piece is precisely the horrendous way the teenagers or at times kids not even in their teenage seen zooming left, right and centre on bikes and scooters on heavy traffic road and crowded areas some to their colleges/schools and most for merry-making and hooliganism. Believing their acts will impress others portray stupidity of the first order. Awful is when you see them without helmet the basic safety head-gear for any two-wheeler rider and pillion. Surprising but many of these youngsters coming from literate background don’t realise the fatal consequences they can meet as a result of overlooking safety norms. Parents too, usually, are responsible for such acts of their children.

Most of the deaths of the rider and pillion in road accidents involving reckless driving are due to head injuries. These could be averted with helmets.

One cannot understand what children derive by acts of overlooking safety issues for one lapse and it’s the end. So if this mindless act is to impress the opposite sex, what use it is if the actor is gone forever!

You may have noticed the youngsters today fancy hanging the helmets more on their arms while riding to wearing it. Some even wear helmets in a very indifferent fashion that juts on the forehead simply to fool themselves more than the cops. The pillion rider however feels privileged having not to wear the helmet as it is not mandatory by law.

A helmet is a form of protective gear worn to protect the head from injuries and not to fool the cop or just because it’s wearing is not mandatory. The safety is of you!

Wanting to know the reason for reckless driving I found while interacting with some boys and girls the reason simply laughable! I learnt they do this for sheer fantasies while others because of poor time management.

Not properly timing their travel to reach school or after school classes in hurry while speeding gets prone to accidents. A very indifferent explanation also came up by many youngsters who avoid helmets. This lot for the sake of retaining their hair style to impress the opposite sex prefer discarding it. How silly! Risking life to meaningless fashion!

The point I am trying to make here is the growing carelessness about road safety and rash driving among the young boys and girls mostly in their teens as seen in the town and elsewhere in the country. As aware citizens it is the joint duty of all to see how this be checked.

While many schools, colleges, parents  and even the Regional Transport Office or Regional Transport Authority (RTO/RTA) people in the recent past have started impressing on road safety, safe driving and awareness about wearing helmet through seminars and personal interactions as result of increasing road accidents involving youngsters, all the appeals are unfortunately going to deaf ears. Its time stringent methods needed to control this worrisome issue which not only is a threat to the offender but to other innocent people on road who fall prey to such nuisance.

The one solution besides the ongoing traffic and road safety and road sense education/awareness campaigns that may set things right is a need to devise a sensor for two wheelers that may buzz aloud if the rider speeding beyond a limit. This can alert everyone around and the traffic cops as well. It will also be a humiliation to the rider riding a vehicle signalling alert.

To make sure the sensors are not disconnected to avoid buzzing the connection is so made that it links to the ignition. If one fiddles with the gadget to tamper it the vehicle won’t start. This is devisable for sure. It may sound a bit absurd at this moment but is practically possible if the government wants.

All two wheelers may have this devise in-built during manufacture; however for the existing ones it be retrofitted. This will ease to check all two-wheelers by the Regional Transport Office or Regional Transport Authority (RTO/RTA) and the cops.

You may remember in early nineteen nineties two wheelers and many four-wheelers in our country did not have indicator lights as it was not mandatory by law then. It was a result of the many accidents that came to fore because of indicators that the government made it mandatory for all vehicles to have them. The existing vehicles made to retrofit the lights. I still remember having had to install two ugly-looking frog eyed kind indicators on the front and rear of my scooter. Likewise, when the CNG/LPG kits made mandatory in certain States, the existing vehicles made to retrofit them. So retrofitting is possible.

Similarly, in an era of digital technology galore, where talks of sensors, nano, micro chip abuzz on even the new currency notes after demonetisation or for the matter the growing of cloud computing capable of storage of unimaginable volumes of data and similar other such amazing examples which were practically unthinkable off till some time back why can’t sensors a device which detect or measures a physical property not come to saving lives.

Its time Uttarakhand emerge as a model state and raise voice on this important issue which be replicated across the country to save reckless riders and those not using helmets from untimely death in road accidents.

Coupled with the technology aspect, the devising of a sensor to check speed, the administration and the public should adopt a “zero tolerance” policy to end undesirable conduct against the erring youngsters. While the cops do their bit, the public should also come forward to tell the traffic management cell via some toll-free number providing the vehicle registration details of reckless drivers for necessary action by the law.

   

As an apt add-on to a “zero tolerance” policy the government must make it mandatory for all school and colleges going youngsters to have their hairs cut the army recruits style. For girls oily hair plaits be made mandatory. If the youngsters do not listen the civilised way, this will instil discipline and keep them away from wrong notion and fantasies. When hairs for which some youngsters crave for be chopped off the problem to some extend be weeded out. With small hairs and oily plaits they will prefer wearing helmet to taking it off. Any youngster below 20 years if found riding a two-wheeler with improper hair cut or without plaited hairs be penalised and their driving licence confiscated.

The therapy of hair cut the military style or any clumsy form is successful in Europe and the US. Parents in these countries use this method as a cure for their naughty and misbehaving kids. Its time for India to try this therapy! We need it more than anyone else!

For the kid’s not even in the teenage bracket, those found ignoring the rules and riding two-wheelers there parents be first penalised and put behind bars for few days as a lesson for exposing their children to accidents and creating nuisance for the public.

All that suggested as measures for road safety; rash driving and use of helmets may sound absurd and laughable at this point of time but definitely a way to tackle the grave problem of rising road accidents involving youngsters.

If necessary the government can adopt the above stated measures even for adults also many of whom overlook traffic rules and regulations.

To carry out this kind of exercise necessary legislation be put in place failing which the problem will only rise in the future. If we want a safe India, the government has to think on these and similar other lines as priority issue.