Quote:
Originally Posted by sunil8089 “At least 13 people die every hour to road accidents in the country, the latest report of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) reveals. In 2007, 1.14 lakh people in India lost their lives in road mishaps” |
I have a lot to say, so please bear.
Safety is not the only reason why our roads are to be cleaned today.
Should we not consider the road users' health? How much mental stress a person should go through, for his daily office commute?
We don't drive fast because we are in a hurry. But we drive fast and ugly, because we are competing with the fellow road user, in spite of having not seen the other guy ever.
I feel that driving through traffic should be a mundane, mechanical activity for a road user.
A person should get on his car/ bike, and as soon as he gets onto the road, look for the road sign for speed, and hover along exactly at that speed and on that particular lane
If, on an unmanned junction, look for the yield sign and let the person on the round about go through, and then carry on until the signal.
Hold onto the lane that would take you on the desired road after the signal, stop before the zebra crossing, and then continue as soon as the light turns green
Repeat the above steps a few times, and reach destination. Get off, lock doors, and now is the time to let one's mind do creative things. Not while on the road.
I will assume the best possible scenario from my house to office on my bike:
As I get off my house road and join the main road, I see that the main road has clearly marked my lane and also has a speed sign on 40 written on it.
I am sure that there is no parked car on my lane, and no person is trying to overtake me as we are all going at ~40.
Next is a turn left where I look right to see if any person on the right. If yes, I stop and calmly wait as the man behind me is not honking at me.
As I take my left and connect to the ring road, I keep to the right most lane which has bold paint on it saying 60-70. I am going to continue on this lane at this speed as there are no humps, for the next 5 Kms as I approach the KR Puram junction. All the while, I haven't been overtaken and I haven't overtaken anybody on my lane. But the ones to the left were the buses and the slower traffic, which bothered me very little. At the junction, I know that the traffic is a little high. So I still keep to my lane, and when the traffic stops, my bike has the gap between the cars or the buses to trundle ahead as they have kept their lanes very sincerely.
I hit the KR Puram railway junction where there are subways and overbridges for pedestrians to cross, and the buses are stopping at their own bays, one behind the other, and not spilling over to the left most lane.
All along, I was on 3 laned roads and now am entering a 2 laned Whitfield road.
Its easy even here, as there are no lorries or tempo's parked on the left lanes, and the bus stops are carved out of the footpaths so that they are not spilling over to the left lane while stopping. I am on the right lane and travelling a little slower here as there are many intersections where oncoming traffic takes right turns. And for every person taking a right turn, I am slowing down/stopping to give way to the person turning.
Not every turn has a U turn, and there are U turns for every One Km where the roads widen to three lanes each side. There are underpasses and skywalks every 500mts for the pedestrians crossing, and they don't interfere with traffic as well. Office spaces and big buildings have Merging lanes on the left so that they don't join the opposite road as soon as they come out of their buildings.
I am at the Hoodi signal now, and have kept to the left most lane which has been left empty by the buses, cars and AutoRikshaws. I cross this signal, continue further and now the big apartment complex to the left has built a Clover for the vehicles coming out to join the opposite side. And I enter my office building which has a speed limit of only 30. I now park my vehicle, and am all refreshed after the pleasant ride, and all geared up for my work.
I was a little irritated by a person who overtook my from the left, and the other autorikshaw that spewed excess smoke. But am sure that they were caught at the next police outpost and were handed hefty fines.
Now is this all possible in India? Bangalore?
I guess yes. Install cameras at all junctions. They detect high beams, speeds and smoke levels from Automobiles.
Install cameras all along the ring roads. One every 1 Km, and not fixed to one place.
Have a college grad part timer, man 20 cameras.
Have traffic policemen at suitable places so that they have enough time to slow an offender (the part time college grad passed the offender information to the policeman at the next outpost in advance) and fine them without hampering other traffic.
Bribes?
All camera information available on the internet live. The police outpost also has a camera that monitors the policeman behaviour towards the offender.
In this age of cloud, making 1-lakh camera streams at low data rate available to general public might not be a very difficult thing.
Moral public sense and police sense can take us all a long way
And is this costly for a country like India?
I guess not.
My bike averages 35Kmpl. 2 rupees every Km. If 25% of fuel price is tax, then (I am paying 50 Paise to travel the same 1Km stretch of road, every day)
That is for my bike. The same for a petrol car is around 7 Rupees per Km, and a diesel one is 4 Rupees per Km.
Does this not all add up for a handsome amount?