Any more praise for Times of India, and I would look like their marketing agent. We are surely on red alert with the Swine Flu pandemic, which has caused 17 people to die in India in last 4 months. Road accidents are killing 17 people every hour in our country, and we have the dubious distinction of topping the list of countries with highest road deaths.

And we don’t give a damn to safety, saying the lofty “Jako rakhe saiya maar sake na koi”.

The TOI has taken up cudgels for the Road safety. I really hope this works and I survive the Indian roads to write the next article on this forum. Having said that, the good intention is flawed with a bad model that won’t deliver results. The ubiquitous Road Safety Weeks have been held in India ever since roads were invented; and they don’t work. All you do, is to grab a loudspeaker and scream, ‘drive safety’, ‘no hurry, no worry’ and such slogans, and create sound pollution and ironically driving distractions.

Human race since time immemorial has been relating the most to role models. Whether its great leaders or great systems, nothing demonstrates the capability to do things better (or sometimes worse) than well established models. Instead of a Road Safety Week, we need a model road. Just one!! That model road should have international quality signage, road marks, traffic cameras, trained traffic police and high and instant fines for safety violations. Once people would see the advantage of road safety, they would automatically be willing to adapt to road safety on other roads.

Our politicians, specially the communist variety, opposed computerization tooth and nail all through the 1980s. They would have continued to do so, but for the Indian Railways. The computerized reservation system demonstrated to the public, what computerization can do, in terms of creating efficiency without necessarily taking away jobs. The communists backed down and now are the most vocal proponents of computerization, e-governance, e-this and e-that!!

The model road should have tough and logical laws. A heavy vehicle driving on the wrong side of the road should be charged with culpable homicide, while a habitual cyclist doing so, should be simply charged with attempt to suicide. Its impossible that the Police Commissioner himself has not averted the crazy cyclist who with full confidence was driving on the wrong side of the road.