India is all set to celebrate the 28th road safety week with the theme of ‘Safety is gainful, Accident is painful’. The road safety campaign was initiated by the ISS India Health Safety and Environment in order to make people aware about the road safety. The Road Safety Week is observed all over India under the guidance of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, from 11 to 17 January. School and college students play a key role in preventing and minimizing road accident fatalities and injuries and are considered to be the main ambassadors for road safety. Their enthusiastic nature and the leadership qualities will help to make the campaign a great success.
The Institute of Driving Training and Research, Pune report says that road accidents are the biggest killer of younger generation in all the major cities. According to the Ministry of road transport and highways, over one lakh people lose their lives every year in road accidents. Several more are grievously injured and people suffer from injuries like loss of hands or legs. Other effects like mental trauma, stress, loss of memory, etc impact the person for his/her entire life.
The main aim of road safety campaigns is to spread the importance of road safety among people. Recently the Honorable Supreme court of India, while scanning the figures of road accident rate has quoted that ‘India can well avoid the tag of being the accident capital of the world’ by proper enforcement of law. On this context 28th road safety week has become more prominent, and government of India has organised several awareness programs across the country to create awareness among public to improve safety on roads. By road safety campaigns the people are encouraged about safe driving practices on roads. The road safety awareness programmes include demonstration of emergency first aid practices, rules and regulations to be followed on roads in a practical manner on test tracks. The RTO officials will take lectures in schools, colleges to sensitize students on the importance of road safety. People are made aware of safety precautions like to use helmets while driving, to wear seat belt, to follow traffic signals, to have periodic maintenance of vehicles, etc. People are taught about importance of installation of speed governors in cars, trucks, buses, etc which will enable the driver to always keep the vehicle under control.
Exhibitions and awareness camps and enforcement drives to curb road fatalities also will be its part.Various painting and drawing competitions, road safety announcements, exhibitions, road rules test, two wheeler rallies to encourage the use of helmets, debates on road safety, seminar etc are organized. Free medical check up camps and driving training workshops are organized for the drivers to encourage them towards the road safety. Road safety quiz competitions are also organized to promote people about road safety.Traffic safety games including card games, puzzles, board games and etc are organized to educate school children about road safety.
We all know about the major factors of increasing road accident rates in India are over speeding, drunken driving, or plainly recklessness. Among this, over speeding always remains the top reason of accidents. Government has made speed governors mandatory in all vehicles having more than 8 seating capacity including commercial vehicles and school buses with the vision to tackle speeding. Considering the increasing road accident rates and the government efforts to reduce road accidents and fatalities by 50% by 2020, Autograde the pioneers in road safety manufacturing equipment’s including speed governors, has made the initiative to spread the importance of road safety week to public through several social media campaigns. Let us join hands in this road safety week to pave the way for safer roads.