In a bid to educate road users through school children the project titled “Every school child to be a policeman at home and maintain road safety” was launched at Kikani Higher Secondary School, here, on Wednesday. The project was jointly launched by the Coimbatore City Police, Ganga Hospital and Round Table Area 7.
Elaborating on the project, City Police Commissioner A.K. Viswanathan said that education has a better role in improving compliance to road rules than enforcement. He said that from July 1 more than 23,000 cases were registered against persons not wearing helmets in the city and over 15,000 cases of drunken driving were booked from the beginning of this year.
Fines in crores
Stating that the police here are collecting fines to the tune of several crore rupees annually for various violations on the road, he claimed that the number of offences and offenders continue to increase.
According to him, 80 per cent of deaths on roads were due to not wearing helmets and drunken driving.
“They (adults using roads) don’t listen to us. Let them obey you,” he said and asked children not to be shy to tell parents and friends to obey road rules. Mr. Viswanathan said that the project will be extended to other schools in a phased manner. The Police Commissioner answered queries by students and started a signature campaign at the school.
Chairman of the Department of Orthopaedic and Spine Surgery, Ganga Hospital S. Rajasekaran said that road accidents were the biggest killers in the country claiming about two lakh lives a year – which according to him is more than the number of lives claimed by any disease.
Claiming that about Rs. 7 lakh crore was spent in the country annually for treating accident victims, he said that this accounts for about 3 per cent of India’s GDP. The doctor also made a video presentation on different types of road accidents (with videos) and how they could have been avoided.
Dr. Rajasekaran said that students could begin their awareness drive by stressing on wearing helmets and seatbelts and avoiding mobile phone usage while driving, over speeding and jumping signals, which could play a pivotal role in saving many lives.
National Secretary of Round Table India Christopher Arvinth, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Traffic) T.K. Rajasekaran, Correspondent of Kikani School Tushar Kikani and Chairman of Area 7 of Round Table India Chirag Vohra also spoke.
