Editorial:Passenger Safety

A person driving to Siliguri recently was flagged down by BRO labourers to stop while the dozers cleared back-cutting debris from NH 31A. As the person waited, a mainline taxi bumped into his vehicle from behind. When the person got out to check the damage and find out the cause, the apologetic taxi driver explained that his vehicle’s brakes were not in top shape. The vehicle had bumped itself to a stop! The damage was not much, but the real worry was the utter disregard for human lives. The vehicle was loaded to full capacity with 10 passengers on board. And no brakes! It soon transpired that all that the driver could present by way of documents was a year-old General Diary police complaint recording that the documents of the vehicle were lost. As for a driving licence, the driver claimed that he had applied for one in Siliguri and yet to receive it. What is more, he was not even the actual driver of the said vehicle and was filling in for the regular driver who had decided to take a day off and requisitioned his services for the day! Just about every prescribed rule for passenger vehicles was being flouted. What is frightening is that it was not even a rare aberration. Little surprise then that in the past two and a half months [April to 14 June 2012], this newspaper has reported 13 road accidents on Sikkim’s roads. Counting the seven lives lost in the Melli accident of Thursday, a staggering 22 lives have been lost to road accidents in the two and a half months in question. It is time that more earnest efforts were initiated to address road safety- the pointlessness of the road safety week tokenism [observed in the first week of May] will just not do any more.
It is important to bear in mind that only two of the 13 accidents were caused by bad roads or landslides. At Sisney in East Sikkim, a landslide collapsed on a vehicle claiming the lives of a husband and wife couple and at Seti Pool towards Siliguri, another couple perished when their vehicle went off the road because there were no prominent markers in place to warn of a collapsed section. All the remaining accidents and fatalities were caused by driver error. Here, one may add that the blame for even mechanical failures leading to accidents has to rest with the drivers for having ignored the warning signs. One should not be surprised if it transpires that most of the accidents involved vehicles which were not road-worthy, either because of faulty brakes or ineffectually traction due to bald tyres or inept hands on the wheels [a poor driver, after all, makes even the best maintained rides dangerous]. The reason why the opening anecdote was shared is because it is a copybook illustration of all that is wrong with passenger/ road safety in Sikkim. Unfortunately, none of real reasons which are making travelling unsafe for people who opt for jeeps and taxis is being addressed. This section has often spoken of the need for traffic regulators to focus more on the road worthiness and driving skills than documents and licences. But this aspect continues to remain ignored. Here is a checklist of what could be considered. For one, the State Government needs to ensure that the “T” [Taxi] driving licenses are issued only after proper verification of the applicant’s driving skills. If this is done conscientiously, then the government can return more strictly to its policy decision of allowing on people with taxi driving licences issued in Sikkim to drive passenger vehicles here. Each time Motor Vehicle Inspectors or Traffic personnel stop a vehicle for ‘document check’ they should also inspect the road worthiness of the vehicle [at least the tyres and brakes] and pull the vehicles off the roads until the vehicles in question are brought back to health. A rule, mandatory in all metros now, that all passenger vehicles prominently display the ownership and driver details for all passengers to see clearly should also be considered [This board should also include contact details of agencies to contact in case of rash driving or rude behaviour by drivers]. This will ensure that the regular drivers do not play truant and put the lives of passengers in the hands of unauthorised and potentially unsafe drivers and will also encourage more passengers to complain against reckless driving. This is important because with the increase in the number of passenger vehicles, too many people with scant respect for traffic rules or human lives are being let loose on the highways.