Earlier this week, I embarked on a road trip that was fascinating in more ways than one. It gave great insights into the progress of road development in India while shedding light on the concerning behaviour of the country’s average road user. It is apparent that they have complete and utter disregard for their own lives and that of others. Unless drastic measures are taken to curb this menace, road deaths in India will continue to rise.
The nation’s expressways have seen remarkable development, but as I once wrote in my column about the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway, we will have to start teaching people how to use these roads. The large number of deaths on the recently opened Bengaluru-Mysuru Expressway and opened stretches of the Mumbai-Nagpur Expressway have prompted the usual busybodies to demand reduced speed limits and what not. I honestly wish these people would drive across India more because speed is truly just the tip of the iceberg.
Drunk driving, triple-riding and more
I have long held that the advent of the 100cc four-stroke motorcycle has done more to connect India than even the Indian Railways. But helmet usage is shockingly uncommon across districts in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh – on expressways, state highways and rural roads. Couple that with triple-riding, which is almost de rigueur, and you ask for trouble. This is not a point about affordability or even enforcement, for that matter; it boils down to users neglecting their own safety.
Recently, noted cinematographer, biker and road safety advocate Navroze Contractor died on Hosur road outside Bengaluru because three drunk motorcyclists driving on the wrong side smashed into his Kawasaki Z650. The accident devastated two families as one of the three young men also died. Yes, even if you design the most utopian society, you can never completely remove crime, bad driving or road accidents from it. However, something must be done to make things better now.
Make no mistakes; it is a matter of pride that we are building roads with a frenzy never seen before in Independent India. I witnessed a significant transformation while driving through a freshly made road in the middle of the Chambal ravines, where being lost was once considered dangerous. Now, apart from roads, new bridges are also coming up across the river, replacing colonial-era pontoon bridges that were shut down every monsoon. Only when you drive through the middle of nowhere can you appreciate the success of the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY). In cities, we might say that former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s greatest infrastructural legacy was the Golden Quadrilateral. But the PMGSY, started by Vajpayee and continued by Manmohan Singh and Modi, has been a game changer for most of rural India.
While driving a big, hulking Mahindra Scorpio-N on one of these roads, a vehicle that could chew through potholes, I noticed only a few potholes along the way.
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Teach them young
The PMGSY roads are far superior to the roads built in many municipalities across India. Sure, I know the thing about road loading and usage, PMGSY roads are lightly used compared to municipal roads, but still seem to be constructed with more care than roads in cities. These roads have opened up economic opportunities and routes to some amazing historical sites.
But there is little point to these roads or the fancy expressways if we do not change our careless ways of using them. The anything-goes attitude with road usage has to change, and enforcement must double down across the country. But most importantly, it is also time to include road usage lessons in the school curriculum. If people are taught to be better road users from a young age, they will not pick up bad habits from their parents and relatives.
I am very proud that India is building all these roads, but they will be pointless unless we know how to use them. Because if we don’t, we will fondly remember the era where we ‘only’ had 1,50,000 road fatalities annually.
@kushanmitra is an automotive journalist based in New Delhi. Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)