Yet another Road Safety Week comes to a close on Friday. This time around artistes, writers and poets were involved in creating road safety awareness in Goa, in addition to the promotional material like cloth banners, safety posters and videos on road safety. Interestingly, this year there was a unique approach, much on the lines of what the community police tried at Verna. Road transport officials offered roses to traffic violators in the hope of changing mindsets and instilling road discipline.
But all said and done, are these initiatives yielding results? Or is Goa blindly following a nation-wide exercise? Is there some semblance of traffic discipline that is attained, or is it chaos as usual? What about arresting road accidents? The traffic department should look within for answers.
Offering of a rose cannot change the course of a system that is terribly gone off track. Impatience and intolerance is so deeply entrenched in the erring motorist, that the symbolic rose is an entirely absurd gesture. The constant chaos and traffic jams at the Cortalim-Siridao stretch and the Guirim-Porvorim route tells a story of brute traffic indiscipline and weak enforcement. No amount of roses or bouquets can change this because our enforcement has been lax throughout, and where reckless driving has a free run. Much of the focus has been on booking motorists without helmets. Other severe offences like random overtaking and even using cellphones while driving, which is now turning into a trend, have gone unchecked.
The transport minister must understand that a complete overhaul of the system is required to bring about a change. There is essentially a lack of elementary traffic education. Stringent policies should be in place right from issuance of driving licenses which is currently a farce and muddled in corrupt practices.
Cut to the present, and we ask why is the errant motorist being extended that leniency? Goa continues to dabble with implementation of the newly-prescribed fines as per the amended Motor Vehicles Act. Why should Transport Minister Mauvin Godinho try to tweak the rules and give relief to offenders when he has very well accepted the fact that enforcement is not in a position to tackle offences?
On another argument, if Road Safety Week is about the safety of motorists, why can’t the government focus on better roads during this week? Goa’s road network continues to be pathetic, and Panaji heads the list. From exposed sewerage manholes to countless road-cuts and loose filling of potholes with stones, the capital city has it all. If there is any concern for the safety of motorists, it must start with better roads.
Officials can’t use road safety weeks to teach road discipline, it’s always going to be an exercise in futility. If the transport department is serious about road safety, it has a lot of groundwork to do, and roses can come out some other day.
