‘Now, Police trying to prevent accidents through orientation of drivers’
| Date :06-Oct-2020 |
By Vikas Vaidya :
If one has a look at the statistics of accidents, it says nearly 10 lakh people die every year because of road accidents. There are several reasons to these road accidents. Government machinery always comes up with some ideas, of which some get implemented some don’t. Some ideas start and then after the person who brings those demits the office the ideas die too. This goes on. Sometimes some ideas get developed in different way which can work for longer time. Dr Bhushan Kumar Upadhyay, Additional Director General of Police (Traffic), Maharashtra who is known to believe in establishing good relations between police and common public, has introduced a new idea to curb accidents.
Policemen doing orientation of truck drivers.
The idea is orientation of drivers, especially those drive trucks. Dr Upadhyay was Commissioner of Police at Nagpur till August end and then he was given the new responsibility which he took over on September 10. Till the time of joining he thought over the issue of curbing accidents on highways. Then the idea of establishing connect with the public stuck his mind. He felt the orientation of the drivers can be a good idea. Till now in just one month the police have conducted orientation of over 7,000 drivers.
Their response to this unique drive of police is quite good. “Good movement on road has two aspects. One is accidents are to be reduced and traffic should move smoothly on road. To achieve these two things I thought over it and I understood that awareness of traffic should be spread, law enforcement if people violate the rules and road engineering are to be well taken care of,” said Dr Upadhyay while talking to ‘The Hitavada’. As per the plans of Dr Upadhyay, the awareness means knowing the traffic rules fully, reasons of accidents, understanding the repercusions of the accidents like in most cases how the family suffers when it loses its earning member etc. Explaining the role of road engineering in accidents, Dr Upadhyay stated, “There are several spots where the road is damaged, some part is left unrepaired, there are accident spots, we have identified around 1,000 black spots on national as well as state highways, where accidents can takes place.” Dr Upadhyay has taken these road engineering issues to Public Works Department (PWD), National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) and sought their cooperation.
The road agencies have shown willingness to cooperate. In fact the agencies succeeded in removing black spots at some places. “We conduct the orientation of drivers in most natural way. Suppose these drivers during their journey stop near the mall, toll plaza or dhaba. At those places our police catch them up and start interacting with them. We don’t take much of their time and see to it that they have understood the point. Police counsel them, talk to them, try to make them aware of rules, tell them the disadvantages of drunk and drive. We want to let people understand us too. We don’t only impose fine, we do orientation also,” explained Dr Upadhyay. With Dr Upadhyay conducting the exercise on highways, he feels it can be implemented in cities too. As far as conducting this exercise in cities, the Commissioner of Police is the whole authority so Dr Upadhyay has sent the letters to all top cops in cities in Maharashtra requesting them to conduct this exercise to prevent accidents and to make the violators follow the rules.