In the past one year, one of the most highlighted and talked about issues has been that of road safety. Last year thousands of school, college and university students took to the streets in order to protest the tragic deaths of two school children in the country’s capital. However, the situation can hardly be said to have improved as more and more cases of people being killed on the streets are reported each week.
According to traffic authorities, part of the blame lies not just with reckless drivers but unruly pedestrians. Jaywalking is such a common occurrence in the city that majority of the people on the streets choose to walk straight through oncoming traffic. Using foot over bridges, foot paths and zebra crossing is seen as too much of a hassle, even if avoiding them can often have deadly consequences.
After failing to rein in these disorderly pedestrians the traffic department has decided to use a novel solution to this ongoing problem. They are now offering hour-long counseling sessions for traffic rule violators. They are also thinking of extending these sessions to day-long or week-long sessions if these sessions fail to bring the desired results.
The main purpose of these sessions is to try and bring about behavioral changes in the pedestrians in the hopes of reducing road fatalities. While the initiative should no doubt be applauded, it’s still very shameful that adults have to be taught such basic safety rules. Reckless drivers are one of the main reasons we see so many deaths happening on the roads each day. But we must also account for our own actions while walking the roads. People would rather risk crossing a road instead of waiting 5 minutes for the signal or spending a few minutes using an over bridge.
According to a study published by Md. Mizanur Rahman, et al in 2012 titled “Comparative accident study on some selected national highways of Bangladesh” 42% of all road accidents in the country involve pedestrians. Clearly, dealing with pedestrians should be top priority. Furthermore, simply counseling pedestrians won’t be enough to deter them from breaking traffic rules. Stricter laws should be put in place to punish jaywalkers and other
disorderly pedestrians.