Recently two boys died while returning home from their school and it brought to light an important problem of our country – Road Accidents and deaths.
The statistics are very grave – 15 people die every hour and 20 children die everyday in India. Number of disabilities due to accidents – about 5 lakh annually. India is second only to China in bad road safety record in the entire world. We have 1% of worlds vehicles but 10% of accident causalities!
So what can schools, parents and country in general do to reduce such death and disabilities?
24.9% of all deaths are on two wheelers. A simple away to avoid death on two wheeler is to wear a helmet. Most deaths by two wheelers that I have heard, the victim did not have a helmet. I think schools and parents can easily enforce helmet prerequisite.
10.8% of all deaths are in cars. Seat beats are an easy way to reduce casualties in cars. A research in UK says that car seat belts avoid 45% of front car seat death. More so the safety mechanism of Air Bags get activated only if the person is wearing a seat beat. Since 1994 India has compulsory seat beats in the front seat and twenty years later – still 99% people are not wearing them!
Using safety devices like seat beats and helmets directly reduce the death rate. Newspapers reporters should mention while reporting each road accident death whether the
50% of deaths are due to treatable injuries but on time care was not given. Some may be due to remote location however if proper training is given to all citizens on what to do in case one witnesses a road accident, it will save a lot of people. One should know the procedure and what the hassles are if they are reporting an accident. I am sure that any human will call 108 provided he is not going to get accused of the accident.
Drink and drive is another major cause of road accident deaths. Thanks to prohibition in Gujarat we are having much less accidents due to use of alcohol. Proof is that none of the Gujarat cities figure in top 10 cities of India in road Accidents. Cities smaller than Ahmedabad like Nashik, Jaipur, Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram have a high number of road crash injuries and all of them didn’t have prohibition. A simple solution is to use taxi services like Uber / Ola when you have high alcohol levels in blood.
Following traffic rules is another major area where India needs improvement. Driving within speed limits, stopping at road signals and right side driving are some simple rules which can save deaths.
Children should have right role models. People driving rash and doing stunts on roads are the ones who don’t care about their family. Children are left alone when parents die on the road. They should be instilled the value of human life and doing they grow up to be a responsible human being.