A novel programme under the name of ‘Super Kid Cop’ has been launched by the city traffic police to involve children in monitoring traffic rule violations.
The programme envisages giving the children the tag of ‘Super Kid Cop’ of the house and having them monitor the driving patterns of their parents and stress them to follow the rules, thus bringing change.
On Tuesday, City Police Commissioner Shankar Jiwal inaugurated a Road Safety Patrol (RSP) Cadets programme for the year 2022-23 in the presence of Additional Commissioner of Police, Traffic, Kapil Kumar C. Saratkar, Chief Traffic Warden Harish L. Mehta and others. Over 15,000 students from Classes VII to XII were enrolled as RSPs from 250 schools across the city.
Launching the ‘Super Kid Cop’ initiative, Mr. Jiwal said under this new programme, students from Classes I to VII would be enrolled. About 1 lakh children would be given cards in Tamil and English. They can check whether the adults are wearing their helmets while riding two-wheelers or if they are wearing their seatbelts while driving four-wheelers.
“They will fill the column in the card after noting the violation, and we definitely believe that they will be truthful. After collecting the cards from them, we will analyse what steps are needed for the education and enforcement of traffic rules,” Mr. Jiwal said.
Answering reporters’ query on frequent traffic congestion on city roads, the Police Commissioner said, “There was no traffic congestion reported in the city when Prime Minister Narendra Modi had come recently. Sometimes, the number of vehicles increases during peak hours, but the width of the road is not enough. As far as possible, we are introducing one-ways to ease traffic congestion after conducting a proper study. In places where the changes were not working, we reverted them.”
He also said Chief Minister M.K. Stalin had sanctioned a new app for traffic regulation which would be implemented in association with IIT-Madras. “We plan to obtain congestion data from Google Maps and use it to regulate traffic flow and signal operations,” Mr. Jiwal said.
He added, “This time, we will have multi-agency coordination with manpower, materials and resources for the monsoon. We will have a coordination meeting, and the response mechanism will be better. Problems arising during the monsoon will be handled easily this time.”
