Despite the Municipal Corporation and the government taking road safety measures such as providing railings at traffic junctions, improving pavements, and increasing traffic control measures, accidents still take place. An important reason for this is that the pedestrians keeping to the left cannot see vehicles coming from behind until they overtake.
A pedestrian, on seeing a pothole, a road bump or a child going astray, has to move a couple of feet to the right; consequently, any vehicle coming from behind has to suddenly swerve further to the right to avoid hitting the pedestrian. If he is unable to do so, he is bound to hit the pedestrian. Also with roads being congested, quite often the vehicle driver who has to overtake a pedestrian finds a speeding vehicle coming from the opposite direction and he too is in danger of being hit. A solution would be to keep pedestrians to the right of the road, while vehicles continue to keep to the left. Therefore the salutary universal rule for road users to be adopted henceforth can be ‘Vehicles Left, Pedestrians Right’. It is time that there is a national campaign on these lines.
P. Sabanayagam,
Chennai
