Although the government has enacted a set of tougher road safety rules while raising awareness of road safety among passengers and transport workers - there has been little visible impact on the number of road accidents in the country. Moreover, a harsh conflict of interest prevails when it comes to public's road safety interest and transport operators' interest.
We are yet to see any change in drivers' mindset and that is why they continue to drive recklessly and engage in risky overtaking. Authorities have not done enough to rectify faulty roads, and the BRTA, which is responsible for granting vehicle licences and overseeing fitness of vehicles, remains ineffective.
One must admit that there is a huge lack of awareness on roads and that it is not just on the part of drivers, but general people too. People do not have a good grasp of traffic laws, and those who do ignore them wilfully. The end result of course is that the death toll keeps rising with each passing year. We need to do something about this and it requires a two-pronged approach. While technical problems of roads can be solved easily, changing mindsets requires a national campaign that will not fizzle out in a week or a month.
We have institutes and experts who have suggestions, from implementing the much discussed plan of bringing buses under five-six franchises, to establishing training centres, auditing road safety, and implementing bans on three-wheelers and slow-moving vehicles on national highways. The government took a big first step when it acknowledged the grievances and demands of the students who protested in large numbers demanding road safety. Now it must translate that into a holistic plan to reform road transport in the country and bring safety to our roads.
Implementation of laws, again, is not a stopgap measure by introducing "traffic week" or "traffic month". Rather, it requires a change in mindset so that enforcement of the law takes place in every area: implementing the traffic rules, granting of licences to people who actually pass BRTA driving tests, educating people to cross roads safely, using signals before changing lanes, disallowing unfit vehicles from plying the roads, among other things. It is a tall order but there can be no shortcuts when we try to bring order out of total chaos and each of us must do our part so that there are fewer avoidable deaths on our roads.
