Road Safety

editorial:

Preliminary investigation into the road mishap which claimed the lives of a young couple on their way to meet their boys - an 8 and a 10 year old, who are now orphaned – suggests that negligence on the part of the driver caused the accident. It does not take very refined investigative skills to figure out that accidents are caused by negligence. That much is a given. What does however require clearer thinking and genuine concern is to work out an effective policing pattern which ensures that young children are not orphaned due to the recklessness of a driver ‘licensed’ to ferry a vehicle-full of passengers. Accidents are not rare occurrences in Sikkim, but what remains inexcusably absent from the roads is a policing approach that catches reckless driving before it ends up in mangled fatalities. These are times when every citizen of the State is also a commuter. Has anyone, ever, witnessed a driver being pulled off the road for reckless driving before s/he has hit someone or something or, god forbid, disrupted the speed of a VIP convoy? This simply does not happen. And yet, every road accident results from negligent driving...

The traffic police division of the Sikkim Police tries to coerce drivers not to blow their horns too often within city limits, its personnel have also been trying hard to make drivers unlearn decades of misunderstood traffic rules and regulations, but as traffic increases, more rules are broken, fewer penalties imposed and the moment one crosses the town limits, anarchy rules the highway. The Namchi accident of Thursday which claimed three lives, is a gruesome reminder of what unsafe driving can deliver on the highway. It is obvious that this vehicle was in a tearing, reckless hurry when the driver lost control and caused three deaths. Anyone who has ever travelled on roads in this part of the hills would have, several times, come within hair’s breadth of a collision or nearly being run off the road by these passenger jeeps, and also, for that matter, VIP light flashing vehicles, which always seem to be in a tearing hurry to reach somewhere. Reckless driving on the highway by these two types of vehicles is no longer the exception anymore; it is now a guaranteed experience. After many close shaves and rattled nerves, comes a collision as horrific as what visited Tiffin Dara in Namchi’s outskirts. News like this brings home the risk that every commuter runs on Sikkim’s highways, a risk kept alive by the fact that no one polices the highways for traffic violations and as mentioned, once the town limits are crossed, it becomes a free for all.
The rare checks on the highway are inconsequential to passenger safety because these only hold up vehicles to check their documents. No driver ever gets hauled up for dangerous driving save when they crash the vehicle and an automatic case is registered. Some years ago, after a slew of accidents on the highway, Sikkim Police had undertaken a very effective drive under which they did not bother with checking documents, but instead checked the road-worthiness of the vehicle [the wear and tear of its tyres for example] and interviewed passengers on how safely their driver was ferrying them. Passengers were also informed that if the driver was being too reckless, a replacement driver would be arranged for them and the demon on the wheels taken in for questioning or at least relieved of the task. This was a brilliant move because it addressed the safety of the passengers and did not obsess over clerical matters like vehicle documents. Admittedly, this was also an impossible initiative to sustain because the logistical challenges were too huge. It worked though for the brief period that it was practised. With the increase in highway traffic due to the setting in of the tourist season and the heightened instinct to speed due to monsoon unreliability of roads, maybe such an initiative should be undertaken again. What would also be worth considering will be to incorporate a dedicated highway patrol, not just for NH31A, but also the State highways. The traffic on these roads has increased in the recent years and the need for the traffic beat to extend beyond the town limits is now a felt need. Of course, none of this would be required if the drivers themselves exercised some peer pressure to ensure safe driving, and because lives are at stake here, even blacklist the notoriously dangerous drivers from steering passenger vehicles...