Steep rise in accidents on city roads

Rachna Khaira

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, January 13

While the Jalandhar traffic police is busy holding awareness seminars during the ongoing traffic awareness week, accidents have been increasing at a fast pace in the city.

Four persons, including a child and an elderly person, were injured in three accidents that took place in the city and its surroundings on January 12.

While Mohan Singh, a resident of Miawali in Shahkot, along with his cousin Balbir, was hit by a speeding car near their village, an elderly person Joginder was injured when he was going to his home in Reru village.

In another incident, a school student sustained injuries when he was hit by a speeding vehicle at Kala Sanghian village when he was going home from school.

In the city too, accidents failed to subside despite strenuous efforts taken by the city police. Three vehicles, including a bus, car and a tipper, rammed into each other on December 31, killing a person and injuring three on the Jalandhar–Pathankot highway.

In another incident on the same day, an unidentified vehicle killed Kishen Das, a resident of Jandu Singha, in the early morning hours.

Despite 91 deaths and 94 injuries in various accidents in the city and a fine of over Rs 3 crore for the violation of traffic rules in the past one year, city residents are yet to learn a lesson from these statistics provided by the Jalandhar Police Commissionerate.

Despite massive awareness seminars conducted by the city police in various educational institutes, students were seen driving vehicles at high speed without wearing any helmet. Educational institutes too have not paid any heed to take any action to prevent this deadly practice.

ADCP (Traffic) Suder Vizhi said though the traffic police were making strenuous efforts to make people aware of the traffic rules, people were not following these whole heartedly.” With a lot of stakeholders in the system, the enforcement becomes somehow difficult,” said Vizhi.

Need to revive project 

Owing to the lack of coordination among three state departments — Health, Traffic Police and Transport — the World Health Organisation (WHO) had shifted its pilot project on road safety, “Drunken driving and wear helmet”, from Jalandhar to Vizag in Andhra Pradesh around two years ago.

Jalandhar, along with Hyderabad, was selected by the international organisation from India as both cities reported the maximum number of accidental deaths and other traffic violations from across the country.

The Road Safety-10 project was initiated by the UN in collaboration with several international agencies like the WHO, John Hopkins University and Global Road Safety Partner (GRSP). It is being implemented in 10 countries, including India.