3 Es of road safety Engineering, Education and Enforcement

How many people of us have experienced the fatal experience of getting almost into an accident and the very next moment thanked god by closing eyes for a sec for saving us from getting into a catastrophe? How come these situations happen to exist in our life? Reason might be the error on the part of us or other road users. No matter what, the incident still pamper n lingers our mind later when we relax at home or when we have nothing else to think about but only highlighting incidents of the day. And we assure ourselves not to get into the situation again if possible at par.


But as they say "life doesn't always give you second chance". It's good to learn from mistakes, but it can't be every time the reason or excuse for learning, to be a decent player on the road. Today there is a need to focus on few things about technical aspects of road safety, a need to revisit 3 Es of Road Safety which is an acronym for three major aspects Engineering, Education and Enforcement.

It is observed everyday a lot of people get injured and killed because of road accidents. And these accidents occur mainly due to pesky road conditions.
Engineering
Today we have got modern equipment, facilities and lot of other engineering marvels to make our lives a lot safer on the road. But there is always, lot more left to do to keep up with the standards or norms of technical road aspects. For instance in practical consideration, wider markings consistently produce improvements in lane keeping discipline on highways. We need to work on the concept of forgiving roads. It is the concept which ensures minimum danger to a road user even in event of accident. A lot needs to be reconsidered and improved upon.

Education
Another aspect for road safety is to educate people about the best practices, guidelines, regulations. Because one would follow a guideline or law only if he knows that guideline or the law. Press and media can help us in this regard. Documentaries, films, booklets and posters apart from other online and offline mediums can be made use of to improve awareness. It is imparted through the exploitation of the Do's & Don'ts from the time a person gets in touch with the road arena. In Delhi; Delhi Urban Mass Transit Authority (DUMTA) is the nodal authority to tackle the capital's chaotic traffic. DUTMA and other agencies like Delhi Traffic Police should take up the responsibility for the awareness programs. And moreover Campaign presentations and Publicity & radio Advertising will do even better.

Enforcement
Higher authorities, traffic wardens and police are responsible for the system to come in force. Police enforces and law courts are responsible for penalizing the person not making upto the rules criteria and so allotted with traffic chalans or penalty and fines to be payable, which acts as a learning lesson for offender for future awareness. Enforcements are generally implemented in the formal ways through "Targeting Crash risk areas", "Extra Patrols on Roads", "Speed Cameras" and much other which may include Road fatalities Ambulance, Special Police duties among others. The stricter we implement the laws the safer we will make the roads. No corruption should be allowed for the enforcing authority because there is simply no scope of it. Read more!

Increase In Road Tax On Two-Wheelers Purchased In Delhi Is not Well Thoughht Decision

Delhi Government recently decided to increase the road tax on the vehicles registered in Delhi. As per the plan the rate for cars, priced up to Rs.6 Lakh is doubled to 4%, for cars between Rs.6 Lakh and Rs.10 Lakh it is upto 7%, while for cars costing Rs.10 Lakh road tax is 10%. It is very high when compared to existing 2% of the vehicle value but I still believe it is the right step taken (with wrong thought process though). What concerns me more is that the road tax percentage for two wheelers has been increased to upto 6%. As per the plan prepared by Delhi Govt. (Pay attention Ms. Dixit) two-wheelers costing up to Rs.25,000 will be charged the existing 2%, while those costing between Rs.25,000 and Rs.40,000 will now attract 4% and those above Rs.40,000 will be charged 6%. I am just curious how many two-wheelers in Delhi today are available for Rs.25,000 or Less. Do you remember Luna (or Loon Naaa), even Luna costs Rs.25,000. Thus what essentially Delhi Govt. has done is increased the road tax rate for practically all the vehicles.


In Ms. Dixit's view the step will discourage the use of private vehicles. So if the road tax is increased there will be reduction in the purchase of vehicles thus lesser traffic. Well by this logic raise the food prices there will be lesser obesity (oops did I trigger another price rise?). They work on the concept of "Discourage use of private vehicles" while the concept should be "Encourage use of public transport". Provide a better public transport and people will automatically leave their cars behind. I have earlier also written about the same subject and today after I have spent a lot of time thinking, still stand for this logic. God please forgive them because they do not know what they are doing.

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Delhi Traffic Police goes social with Twitter and Facebook accounts

When I joined Twitter and started following people apart from my colleagues, friends and some industry leaders I searched for the concerned authorities in various departments, especially Delhi Traffic Police (DTP) and the road and transport ministry. But I was unable to find someone. Online is very a good medium to connect with the people who are concerned. Then I read about Delhi Traffic Police initiative in the newspaper and was happy to know that the department is looking to come closer to the people who wish to contribute. The only problem was the newspaper did not tell the URL for the traffic police profiles on the social media. I thought of searching it twitter/Facebook. Twitter was no luck but I could find Facebook page for DTP (that is one of the reason for me to write this post).

Click here for Delhi Traffic Police facebook profile. Through Facebook(FB) they plan to provide information about new plans, initiatives and challenges, and also make the users aware about the traffic situation in the city besides seeking suggestions, reactions and views from citizens. At the time of writing this blog the count of the people who liked DTP Facebook page was 1,231. People are posting a lot of queries and suggestions on the wall of the page and also being amazed by the fast response from Traffic department. I saw their responses till as late as 10:00 PM in the night (on the day I joined their FB page). Some critical information like the URL of DTP suggestion page on DTP site, Contact Email ID and the call-center phone numbers were missing from the info tab of the FB page. Another thing that I found here (FB page) is links to other social media profiles (twitter) missing. Photos tab show the photos of DTP personnel in action (also the image of TSR complaint campaigne). In the discussion forum they have displayed four topics including 'Delhi Tourist Police', 'Guidelines for Foreigners Visiting Delhi', 'Traffic Management during Commonwealth Games' and 'Safe Pedestrian Drive by Delhi Traffic Police'. Hope to see a lot more topics there. There is an additional tab called "Boxes" which carries all the links shared on this page. I sincerely hope to see a sea change starting with this initiative.

Though hunt for DTP twitter handler did not return any thing on tweeter search a status update on FB worked for me. I asked about the tweeter handler on FB and a page fan (sorry I still call it "Fan" and not "Like") replied back with Twitter ID for DTP. The ID is @dtptraffic. DTP says that through twitter the plan is to provide real-time updates of any traffic snags due to events, processions, rallies, road congestion, accidents etc. The History tells it started on 14th May, already has 254 followers and tweets an average of 5 tweets a day. People are interacting with DTP and in some cases are actually being creatively funny. For an instance on 3:10pm, May 19 @libinmb tweets "Beware delhi police in twitter @dtptraffic to controle the twitt traffic:)". The expectations from the social profiles of DTP are very clear from all the posts and updates. These are i) More and more updates (@rohitdass updates "at this rate of 6 hourly updates there would hardly be any use of them updates") ii) Platform to get evaluate and implement suggestions and iii) Provide the details about lesser known traffic laws.

At the end I would say it is really heartening to have our Delhi Traffic Police come up an age and embrace the Mediums of today's generation to communicate with them and being open to take all those bouquets and brickbats. All we need to see now is how far they go with it because the opportunities and options are unlimited.

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Remove the obnoxious autos from Delhi roads - Why?

All sorts of discussions started when our CM Smt. Sheila Dikshit suggested "that autos will be phased
out of Delhi roads once Government find alternative to three-wheelers." Well this is a small question I want to ask the Janta of Delhi what actually is the issue? Is it auto or Auto walahs or their behavior? Ask from me I'll say their behavior. So if that is the case will replacing autos with some other form of vehicle or transport system resolve the issue?

Well No alternate vehicle is going to resolve the issue. Replace it with Radio Taxi, as someone suggested in one of the blogs, but keep the drivers; Pooff what do you get? the same old issues of passengers being hackled. May be a different transport system could be the answer to the problem. We will have to devise a way by which Govt. can ensure that no Autowalah (let me call them Autowalahs only at this point of time) can over charge, refuse to take you to your destination or refuse to go by meter. Delhi Government really need to rein in the autos.

For this Govt. will also have to tackle the problem of Auto owners exploiting the drivers. The Badges and registration of Auto in the name of the driver are two good measures Delhi Govt. has taken in this direction. But how far has it implemented these measures? Now this is only a hunch but I believe that not more than 20% of all auto walahs have Verified their permits and received new badges from the Authorities. Please correct me if I am wrong. I'll be more than happy to be wrong on this one. 

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Dont be a monster behind the Wheel

Friday night I was returning home from my office in my car and was stuck in a bad traffic maybe because if the evening rain. Hoooonnnnnnnk Poonnnn Hoooooooonnnnnnkkkkkkk and then Screeeech stopped a Hyundai Accent right behind my car. Honk Honk Honk Beep Beep Beep this guy was really impatient. I moved to the next lane, he found some space to slip in and Honk Honk Honk again. He kept honking speeding with full paddle to plug the gap and Honk again for the next car.

Now I would give him the benefit of doubt and assume he was carrying someone who needs immediate medical attention. But how many of such cases daily are really carrying a patient to the hospitals. I guess most of them are not. It’s only their Adernalin rush in more than 90% cases. Well have we ever thought about the negatives of it? Well let’s start with the amount of fuel you burn with this accelerate break accelerate break accelerate break. When we are using too much of that accelerator paddle mileage of your car actually decreases by as much as 25%. What! You are big shot and fuel prices don’t bother you much, remember fuel reserves are limited but I guess that also won’t bother you much. Okay your rash driving can prove dangerous for others. How dangerous? Well dangerous enough to kill someone. Kill a loved one, may be a son or a daughter or worse, the lone bread earner of a family. How does that affect you? Imprisonment could be one reason. But then yes you might have the connections at the top positions which could save you from the prison. But what if you get hurt? Can your connections ensure that you don’t? Do I need to go even further to count more evils of that rushing Adernalin. Just think once before you step on you Gas next time. Drive safe. Read more!

How to prevent reduce Driver Fatigue

Two weeks back Eddie Wren from Advanced Drivers of America shared an article on how Mercedes has introduced the system to tackle drowsiness while driving. Mercedes is introducing new Attention Assist system, designed to detect drowsiness on the driver. But technology can only help in creating the tools which we require to make things go our way. To avoid the evils of he drowsiness while driving we should also make the conscious effort ourself. When I asked Eddie to help me in putting up an article on how we can prevent or reduce the driver fatigue (and drowsiness), he shared some really good facts and techniques for the same. These items are collated from empirical research on global best practice. Thus these carry Copyright of Eddie Wren / Advanced Drivers of America. I have added my analytical effort and created these guidelines.

GUIDELINES TO HELP YOU PREVENT OR REDUCE DRIVER FATIGUE

1. The best and first way to prevent driver fatigue is to get enough sleep. This means sleeping for at least good 8 hours before you set out for the trip.


2. Avoid heavy meals before long drives, especially if you are one of those who feel snoozy post dinner

3. Avoid alcohol, which contributes to sleepiness, large meals and any medications that might make you drowsy.

4. Adjust your seat to an upright position so that the base of your wrists makes contact with the top of the steering wheel. Keep the temperature even; driving in a car that’s too warm or too cold can make you sleepy.


5. Stop every two hours or 100 miles (160 Kilometers) of travel -- whichever comes first, for at least a 20-minute break. This is important not only to maintain alertness but also to prevent deep-vein thrombosis. It is bad for your circulation -- particularly your legs -- to sit for too long at the wheel of a vehicle, without exercise.

6. Once you have stopped, if your health factors permit, drink a caffeinated drink (e.g. coffee, tea e.t.c.) then have a brisk walk.

7. If you actually start to feel drowsy while driving, find the first safe place to get off the road and stop, as promptly as possible. This must be a safe distance away from any moving traffic.

8. If you stop as suggested above, you should -- if possible -- have TWO caffeinated drinks (not just one) then take a nap of up to BUT NOT EXCEEDING twenty minutes.
(Use your cell phone's alarm to make sure you awaken before the 20 minutes is up). This apparently random reference to 20 minutes is actually very important and it relates to the fact that a human brain identifies a long nap as being the start of a longer, deeper sleep, and it therefore triggers the release of endorphins into the blood stream specifically to make you go into and stay in a deeper sleep. Clearly that is not a signal you want your body to issue if you plan to continue driving. Those endorphins, once released, will stay in your blood stream for around 8 hours and will make you a major danger to yourself and to everyone who crosses your path during that time.

9. If you follow the directions in paragraph above, you should be okay for another session behind the wheel (but be particularly careful to monitor your own alertness). If you start to feel drowsy again during this next portion of your journey, enough is enough; it is time to stop and find a motel. Continuing to drive might result in you killing yourself or -- even worse -- perhaps obliterating somebody else's children (or maybe even an entire family).


10. Shift-workers -- in particular night-shift workers -- have a much higher risk of crashing due to drowsy driving. Young men, in their teens and their 20's are at a higher risk than other people, too.

11. Be very cautious about driving overnight. At night the brain simply follows the body clock irrespective of your actions and releases endorphins, so if you drive during your normal sleep period, you are putting yourself and all around you at significant risk.

Hope this will help you enjoying a safe driving trip. Read more!