A committee appointed by the Supreme Court to recommend measures to improve India’s road safety has urged chief minister Mamata Banerjee to act immediately on five essential areas, including pedestrian safety and wrong-lane driving.
In April 2014, the apex court established the Supreme Court Committee on Road Safety to address increasing incidents of road accidents and focus on engineering, education and enforcement.
“The order of the Supreme Court inter alia mandates time-bound actions focusing on five critical areas. These are: first, pedestrian safety, making pedestrian-safety crossings safe; second, helmet enforcement; third, wrong-lane driving; fourth, unsafe overtaking; and fifth, the control over lights and hooters over vehicles which do not follow the rules,” the letter says.
The letter addressed to “Dear Mamataji” was sent by retired Justice Abhay Manohar Sapre, a former judge of the Supreme Court and chairman of the committee on road safety.
The other members of the three-member committee are Sanjay Bandopadhyaya and Nishi Mittal.
According to senior officers, pedestrians have made up close to 40 per cent of fatal accidents over the past five years.
Kolkata Police have been issuing guidelines for pedestrians, but jaywalking continues to be a menace.
Encroachments and obstructions on footpaths have also made jaywalking essential in several parts of the city.
The letter from the committee asked the state government to conduct pedestrian audits.
“Conduct pedestrian infrastructure audits by the road owning agencies... to ensure that they are compliant with the IRC guidelines.... The authorities shall also prioritise those areas where there have been pedestrian injuries/deaths in the last 2-3 years,” says the letter.
The audit is supposed to identify deficiencies in the existing footpaths, including their width, height, and surface, decide on remedial measures like repair and road engineering improvements of the facilities, and fix a timeline to address the deficiencies.
The five-page letter dwells on each of the five identified areas in separate sub-heads and goes on to spell out what needs to be done on each of the areas of concern.
“Explore public awareness by public dashboards displaying real-time information on lane violations etc,” the letter says.
Senior officers of Kolkata Police said that specific awareness drives have been launched to ensure motorists learn to stick to lanes while driving to avert accidents.
“The points that have been mentioned in the letter are a part of the ‘Safe Drive Save Life’ campaign that Kolkata Police have been conducting for years now,” a senior officer overseeing the city’s traffic management said.