Over-speeding and disregard for traffic rules leading to mishaps
Jamshedpur: Despite mass awareness campaigns and enforcement drives the graph on road traffic accidents stubbornly refuses to come down, going by the statistics of accident victims. A comparison with last year�s data revealed that the number of accident cases treated at MGM Medical College and Hospitals had gone up in all but one of the first five months this year.
On Monday. Kanchan Pal, 22, a resident of Vijaynagar in Golmuri, was killed on the spot and Jay Dutta, ( 22) a resident of Kadma, was seriously injured when their bike rammed into a divider on Kadma-Sonari marine Drive near Ghodababa temple under Kadma Police Station. Jay has been admitted to Tata Main Hospital. Police said none of them was wearing helmet.
Concerned over the rash-driving by the heavy vehicles and fatal mishaps taking place repeatedly in the city, district police also convened a meeting of the traffic police officials.
�Something has to be done to reduce the speed of vehicles near human habitations. There is no use in putting up boards showing speed limits or marking accident prone zones. The road has not improved our lives beyond providing better connectivity,� said Mohammed Nizam of Mango.
“We will see to it that rash-driving is checked with immediate effect, and for this we will look into exactly how many cases related to the road accidents have been registered and if the drivers who are accused of causing the mishap are being convicted,” said a police official.
He revealed that he would make the traffic police officers and also those posted in the police stations across the steel city to ensure that drunk driving is checked completely by pressing the necessary testing equipment immediately after a mishap takes place.
Another senior police officer also pointed out that he was going to curtail the rash-driving by the two-wheelers, especially the youngsters. He said he would stress whether the investigation into the cases related to the road mishaps were being pursued properly.
The use of substandard helmets by the motorcyclists is on the rise as a number of people could be witnessed on the city roads wearing such helmets and sprinting their bikes, risking their life. They are of their opinion that they use light weight plastic helmets to counter the heat as well as to avoid the traffic violation tickets and not to avoid road accidents.
With traffic police intensifying enforcement of the mandatory helmet rule for two-wheeler riders, use of cheap and substandard headgear has increased several-fold. A number of roadside helmet shops have sprung up across town to meet the increasing demand of such helmets which fall woefully short of Bureau of Indian Standards guidelines.