The recent death of a minor riding a two-wheeler at Mata Mandir Road has once again elicited focus on the apathy of people towards their own security and traffic offences being the prime reason behind majority of road accidents. Earlier in the month of October, at least three different cases of road accidents were reported in Dehradun, in which traffic offences such as suspected drunken driving, not wearing helmet and riding on wrong side of the road resulted in deaths of four persons.
Superintendent of Police (traffic) Prakash Chandra Arya said, “The purpose for amending Motor Vehicles Act and setting such high penalty rates was to make sure that the people if not by their sense of security, at least start obeying the laws out of fear of high amount of penalty.
Even though they are starting to complete their paperwork, awareness is lacking somewhere. It is unfortunate that even after our repeated attempts to make the citizens aware about traffic rules and the drastic difference obeying rules can make between life and death, such accidents are being reported.”
When asked whether public apathy or lack of implementation is the problem, he said, “Till November 9, most of our force is busy in maintaining traffic operation smoothly. Definitely, we have not been able to focus on implementation as much as we would have liked, still we are continuously conducting campaigns and awareness drives from our level.”
It is pertinent to mention here that in the past, senior officials of Uttarakhand State Transport Authority have also appealed to the general public to obey by the traffic laws rather than bickering about high amount of penalty.
They argued that if the public will not break any rules, which are made for their own safety, they will not have to pay any amount of challan.
It is also important to mention here that in the year 2018, total 1,468 road accidents were reported in the state in which 1,047 people died while 1,571 were injured.