Bikers’ safety, seat belts and jaywalking on police radar this Road Safety Week

Kolkata: This Road Safety Week, cops will be focusing on three issues — instilling traffic sense amongst two-wheeler riders, making motorists understand the importance of wearing seat belts and explaining to pedestrians the danger of jaywalking.
The importance that the police brass was giving to two-wheelers became clear on the first day itself, when commissioner Soumen Mitra kicked off the week at Brooklyn on CGR Road — a Port area which has attained notoriety for frequent accidents involving two-wheelers.
Mitra reiterated how the city was witnessing a steady drop in the number of accidents following the participatory and proactive role of the police in spreading awareness. Mitra spoke at length of a new initiative by Kolkata traffic police to provide counselling and rehabilitation help to families of fatal accident victims. The cops are meeting such victim families and helping them to get insurance claims at the earliest. “We have been successful in bringing down accidents. Our efforts are on to bring them down further. We will help accident victims get their insurance claims quickly. The OCs of local police stations will meet the families of these victims and help them expedite the process,” said Mitra.
Across 25 traffic guards, innovation will be the key instead of the usual roadside awareness campaigns. The East traffic guard has taken the lead in innovating and is targeting the young. For a beginning, those not wearing helmets were asked to take a selfie at a selfie point that will have a huge cutout of a helmet above the rider’s head.
Those found walking on the road talking on mobile were asked to complete an obstacle race, the obstacles being similar to the ones “faced in real life on the road when one is walking on the road without caring for the traffic around them”. Errant bikers were also asked to take up a lane-driving challenge and those successfully completing the course were handed a token prize.
At Tiljala traffic guard, cops are getting motivational speaker Indrajyoti Haldar to speak on the benefits of following traffic rules. “We are targeting the affluent class as we have found several of them breaking rules at night. Before that, we got app cab drivers to manage traffic for us and see for themselves how even a simple stop line violation can lead to a potential traffic challenge,” explained an officer there.
The southwest traffic guard has decided to teach two-wheeler riders and auto drivers on the black spots of drivers of goods vehicles. “Unless two-wheeler and three-wheeler riders know the problems faced by those driving bigger vehicles, they will fail to be careful. We are asking the bikers to get on trucks and then try to spot a bike overtaking from the left. We are also holding an orientation course for auto drivers,” said an officer.