Editorial: Road Safety

Sixteen dead and five injured. These are not figures one expects from a taxi-jeep accident. Twenty-one people in one vehicle is close to a busload of passengers [SNT buses have a prescribed passenger load of 32], and yet, they were aboard one Tata Spacio on Friday night. The vehicle’s name might suggest spaciousness, but this many people is still ten too many from the prescribed load. And yet, this many went down with the ill-fated vehicle on Friday night and only five survived. There are many in Sikkim who complain against the strict implementation of traffic and road safety rules in Sikkim [although recent experience shows that these should be even more stringently enforced]. They need look at the Friday night accident and resolve to demand, as mentioned, even stricter enforcement of road safety rules, not just in Sikkim, but in West Bengal as well because laxity in the WB side imperils commuters travelling from Sikkim as well. Most of the passengers in the ill-fated vehicle were from the South Sikkim border town of Melli. The accident took place across the border on the West Bengal side. Six of the passengers on board were from Teesta, West Bengal. It is obvious that while the vehicle left from Sikkim with a reasonably safe load of passengers [many of the 16 were children], it returned from Tribeni with an additional load of six because the lax road safety implementation on the WB side allows it. It is a common sight to see passengers sitting on roofs of passenger jeeps on the WB side of NH 31A, a load one never sees on Sikkim roads. The six were probably only taking a lift till Teesta, but there is a reason why vehicles have prescribed passenger loads. Over loaded vehicles do not always meet with an accident, but when they do, they post shocking numbers as those which have shocked Sikkim now. Maybe the accident was not brought on by the overcrowding of the vehicle, but it was definitely facilitated by a policing which allows drivers to become careless, does not allow passengers strong enough grounds to protest and finally imperils too many lives. This is not just about enforcing prescribed passenger loads more strictly, but appealing that doing so [and ensuring other road safety aspects] will lay a stronger foundation to keep the roads safe and save more lives from being pointlessly lost to avoidable slackness. Once there is general consensus on the fact that no aspect of passenger safety is too minor to be ignored will come a stage when more issues [overlooked thus far] can be addressed – like speeding, DUI, road worthiness of passenger vehicles etc. These aspects of travelling become important to bear in mind given that this is also the picnic season when passengers can be expected to become more boisterous, the hands on the wheels more inebriated and recklessness breakneck...