Most of the times it is the law makers and enforcement forces who are at the receiving end of getting the blame for road accidents.
However, contrary to the popular belief, according to the traffic directorate data for the year 2018, it is the violation of traffic rules by the citizens themselves which in most of the cases leads to road accidents and deaths.
According to the data, among the 1,468 road accidents reported last year in Uttarakhand, 739 accidents were due to over speeding or rash driving, 109 accidents happened due to driving on the wrong side of the road and 190 accidents happened because the driver tried to wrongly overtake another vehicle.
Last year in total 1,047 people were killed in road accidents out of which 495 lost their lives because of over speeding and rash driving.
One of the senior officers of State Transport Authority (STA) said that the maximum number of people are not fully aware about traffic rules while those who are aware choose not to follow them thinking that there is no law enforcer around. Such people usually end up hurting themselves or others by being the cause of a road accident.
What people fail to understand is that traffic rules are for their own safety, but they only follow rules because of the fear of law enforcers. Dehradun Superintendent of Police (traffic) Prakash Chandra Arya said, “Enforcement alone cannot reduce the number of accidents and deaths, people need to become aware about the rules also.
For this purpose we routinely conduct awareness programmes in schools and colleges.” Vikram Kumar, an engineering student from a private university was at the Dehradun traffic department to pay his challan, when asked about this issue he said, “I was not wearing a helmet when I got caught by CPU officer.
I know I was at fault and will pay the challan, but the question is why only we are being fined for the violating rules.
Several times it is the pothole that results in accidents, water logging on roads or some stray animal; the administration is supposed to keep all this in check but no one issue them challan, when they fail to do their duties.”