CHENNAI: SN Vijayagopal, 81, was on his morning walk on Medavakkam Main Road on December 19, 2015 when a bike slammed into him. Three surgeries and two hospitalisations that cost the retired Doordarshan employee more than 25 lakh, the accident claim case drags on eightand-a-half years. The lawyer says the case is delayed primarily because the person who was riding the bike was a 15-year-old boy without a licence.
“I had my spleen and part of the pancreas removed; my broken bones have been fixed, but my right leg remains swollen,” says Vijayagopal who nurses no grudge against the boy, but the senior citizen wonders if the youngster regrets what he did.
Ibrahim*, a 19-year-old from North Chennai, does regret his decision of racing a bike when he was 17. For, he is unable to get a passport now as he prepares to go abroad for higher studies. “I was in Class XII whe n some older friends invited me for a race on the Marina beach. I joined them and we were all caught. While others had driving licences, I didn’t have one,” says Ibrahim.
In Chennai, underaged riders caused five fatal accidents and 20 cases of grievous injuries this year. In one of the accidents recorded by the Pulianthope traffic investigation wing, a pedestrian died of head injuries two days after the accident that left the juvenile rider too injured.
Traffic police say young boys take to such illegal riding often in fluenced by social media videos and peer pressure. Officers say underaged driving often goes unchecked because it takes physical inspection by police, while many other violations can be caug ht remotely using cameras. “We need to do vehicle checks to catch people driving without a valid licence,” says Anna Nagar traffic enforcement inspector R Sakthivel. Police conduct awareness programmes in schools and colleges. “They should know that when a underaged person causes an accident, there would be no insurance claim for the rider, and sometimes the victim also struggles to get it,” say s the inspector. “While many schools have started discouraging students from driving to school, boys and girls still take the vehicles when they go for tuition and other places. Some youngsters ta ke vehicles out for fun,” said another traffic police inspector.
Police have warned that parents will be booked if their wards below the age of 18 are caught driving a vehicle. Parents will face arrest if such a vehicle meets with an accident.
Additional commissioner (traffic) Kapil Kumar C Saratkar says traffic policemen occasionally participate in parent-teacher m eetings in schools to tell parents not to let their underaged children drive. “We also tell parents and students that getting booked for underaged driving can affect their prospects of getting passports and jobs,” he says. While a lot of juveniles and parents are under the impression that driving an e-scooter without a licence is fine, police say any registered vehicle needs a licence to operate as per rules and an e-scooter is no exemption. Besides stepping up checks, police keep an eye on social media for videos of rash driving by youngsters, says the additional commissioner.
“We get information from p eople about youngsters indulging in drag racing on the city roads and we follow the leads. We conduct special drives to teach school students road discipline and why they should not drive t ill they attain the legal age. A traffic warden scheme for schools where students voluntarily regulate vehicles outside the campus in the morning and evening hours also help spread awareness,” says Saratkar.