Safe Journey

Editorial:-
There has been another mishap on the highway and lives lost, again. Given the terrain, the quality of the roads, the complete absence of any safety equipment in public carriers and the dodgy skills that too many drivers of passenger vehicles are allowed to get away with, news of an accident and fatalities come as no surprise. What is shocking though is that very little is being done to ensure safer travel for people using passenger vehicles. While nothing can be done about the terrain, a lot more could be done to improve roads, reinforce safety measures in vehicles and ensure that only drivers with proper skills, aptitude and attitude are allowed to ferry passengers.
Sikkim’s roads have been works in progress for far too long. Accepted that the roads need to be expanded, but now that some work is underway, the engineers should work on more aspects than just the width of the roads. More technology needs to be deployed to make the roads safer. Basic infrastructure like guard rails should be made mandatory because these alone could save countless lives given that almost every fatal mishap involves a vehicle flying off the road. Better warning systems like the very basic mirrors at least at blind turns would also help as would a more expansive deployment of highway patrols, of which there are inexcusably none at present. Traffic cops needs to realize that their job is about more than putting clamps on vehicles for parking violations. Vehicles left in no-parking zones are a nuisance at worse and taxis stopping out of turn are irritants; reckless driving on the highway however is life threatening. Highway checking, on the rare occasion that it is undertaken, checks the documents. This is an irritant. What is necessary though is routine checking of vehicle health and driver aptitudes. This could save lives. And this is necessary because no one is yet bothered about making the passenger vehicles any safer. Apart from breaks, these vehicles have no safety measures so it boils down to the driver and his skills to keep travel safe. Shouldn’t more stringent conditions be then exacted before drivers issued a taxi driving licence? An effort on these lines was made by Sikkim Police once in the past when its personnel would stop passenger vehicles on the highway and check on the condition of the tyres, the effectiveness of the breaks and enquire with passengers on the driver’s skills. The initiative had impressed passengers, both locals and tourists, but was unfortunately too short-lived. It needs to be revived and measures introduced to ensure that only the better drivers get Taxi Driving licences.
And while these initiatives are attempted, citizen groups need to come together and build pressure on the government to make it mandatory for vehicles to have better safety features before they are issued taxi numbers. Taxis, one must bear in mind ply for profit and not as social service, so some demands can be made [beyond the hilarious fire extinguisher rule] which make them safer. No government is going to proactively initiate such a measure, but if public opinion is built, something like this is possible. After all, a regular passenger jeep has a carrying capacity of nine passengers and one driver; shouldn’t a vehicle which travels with ten lives on board have better reinforcement?