good motoring
Danger spots
H. Kishie Singh

It is a common sight that we see on our roads almost every day. A traffic policeman sees an offender and signals the driver to stop. The driver comes to a halt but makes no attempt to park safely either off the road or to the extreme left-hand side. This means that when the policeman comes over to the driver’s window, he could be standing in the way of traffic whizzing by at high speed, millimetres away from the unsuspecting policeman. It is very likely that the policeman could get hit.

The United States of America Road Safety Council has come up with a new coinage "stop location". This is the spot where a policeman stands (often in the way of traffic) when he attends to a halted vehicle. It has emerged from research and investigation carried out regarding accidents where policeman on duty have got killed. The findings are alarming. More policemen have got killed by cars than gunfire in the US, which is a very trigger-happy nation. These policemen get killed simply because they are standing in the wrong place. The "stop location" is considered a danger spot.

The accompanying photograph shows that a policeman is standing on a road meant for traffic. Fortunately for him, traffic in Chandigarh moves at a respectably slow speed. With increasing traffic and speeds, this would be a dangerous "stop location".

There have been instances in City Beautiful where a policeman has got run over by a speeding car or by a car he was trying to stop. The Chandigarh Police would do well to address this aspect of traffic policing before it becomes a problem and lives are endangered unnecessarily.

Another point that needs looking into is the position of traffic lights. At the moment they are on the extreme right or left, and often high up on the top. Sometimes they are not easily visible to drivers from a distance. To get a good look, the driver moves up and inadvertently parks on the zebra crossing – a serious traffic violation. The Transport Chowk Crossing has this problem. If the traffic light was in the centre of the road, high up in line with the stop line, it would solve a couple of problems. Drivers would not need to crane their necks to see the traffic lights. Moreover, a driver would be able to see the light from a hundred metres away or more and have adequate time to come to a stop when the driver sees the light changed from green to amber.

A countdown in seconds to intimate a driver how many seconds there are for the light to turn green is not a good idea. With five seconds to go, drivers start to rev up their engine F.1 style and are gone when a second or two are still remaining. This is jumping the red light and could result in a collision at high speed. You could have the straggler stepping on to the accelerator to make the most of last few seconds before the amber light turns red and the red light jumper with his jack-rabbit start and building up speed. An ideal mix for a collision.

The ideal combination for change of lights would be from green to amber to red. The amber being long enough for everyone to come to a halt before it turns red. Drivers should halt on an amber light. When the lights at crossroads are already red, they should stay red even after the lights for the other road have turned red. This means all four lights are red concurrently, even though for a couple of seconds. The advantage of this would be that all traffic would have halted. Then for the halted traffic, the lights turn from red to green without amber, and no countdown.

The countdown serves no purpose. It only encourages drivers to jump the red light. Would the traffic department please ask themselves what purpose the countdown serves? To my mind it only encourages impatient drivers to jump a red light. The purpose of lights is to regulate traffic and do it safely.

Happy motoring