Samikhsya Bureau
When one opens the news in any channel or flips the newspaper, one is bound to notice news items telling you about a tragic road accident somewhere and so many killed and so on. And next one comes across a one-liner obituary or grief expressed by either the chief minister or any other leader mouthing empathy for the victims. So, it goes on and on. Sympathies and empathies saturate the concerned area and all that ends with an inquiry order.
The dead are taken home and the injured left on hospital beds while their relatives keep exhausting their wallets on treatments.
There can not be any second opinion on the matter that a majority of such road accidents take place due to few reasons like, drunken-drive, recklessness, violation of traffic rules and inside the cities because of a lackadaisical policing system.
Figures can surprise anyone but the people who take to driving with the reckless ease. In last one decade over 43,000 got killed during last one decade in road mishaps between 2008 to 2018 and more than 80 percent of such tragedies were preventable through precautions.
According to one report about 4,790 people were killed in road mishaps in 2017 and the shocking figure of 1,04, 713 deaths due to accidents took place during the decade.
The awareness drives are getting worn-out when they remained in the confines of posters or signage. There is no dearth of such campaigns against reckless driving but the dearth is no fear of the rules and the most shockingly there is no fear of death! Everyone thinks it is the government that has to stop all such ills.
One normally comes across reports in newspapers that the driver lost control and so on. Which usually happens when either you are inebriated or sleepless or in a hurry for no reason. When the dividing line between safety and recklessness becomes very thin and one choses the latter, it happens.
Located in the middle of the capital city Bhubaneswar, the police commissionerate remains oblivious to litany of wrongs taking place just outside this posh structure. The big bosses sitting in this building can be seen swarming like bees during the assembly sessions or a high-end official event but one rarely finds these big ‘babus’ in ‘khaki’ among the common commuters. And their subordinates posted at several points are either inured to what happens around or just give a dam. Have you seen some nuisance makers speeding on bikes through the busy traffic at a monstrous speed creating a panic among all. It is common. But our cops fail to see it.
They never focus on issues like rash driving inside the city by one and all including buses. In every five men at the wheel at least three can be seen driving while talking on their cell phones. Even the traffic personnel at junctions choose to look the other way and rather a few of them remain busy preying on a biker without helmet.
