In the last four months from September to December 2022, there have been continuous road accidents in my residential area as well as in a few places far away from my home. Most of the accidents have been happening among the young school children and young men after they had knocked with vehicles. They knocked with vehicles in the daytime, they knocked with night supers in the evening, and some riders knocked with loaded trucks on the highway. After the accident, people would say the riders rode at a moderate speed, some would say the riders rode with great acceleration with heavy noise; some would blame the riders, and vice versa.

A few days ago, an excavator came to our house after our family members told the proprietor of the excavator to dismantle a concrete wall and dispose of the scrapped things from our home boundary. The excavator came accordingly, and gave us the service; the driver of the excavator did all the things accordingly. But I was astonished to see that the driver was a small boy. After sometime I said to myself, “Will this boy know all the traffic signals of the road.” I thought this because most of the street accidents have been happening in the road because of excavators, night super buses, and loaded trucks for the last few years.

In my hometown, rickshaws are rarely seen now; they are now replaced by electronic rickshaws. I frequently heard that people who pulled the rickshaws in the street hardly knew anything about the traffic rules. When I was studying in my primary classes at school, rickshaw accidents had been a common scene then. The other cause of rickshaw accidents was because they did not know to read the names of the streets; without obeying traffic rules they tried to reach their destination. When such accidents occurred, the clients who happened to be parents and school children faced sorrowful injuries in their bodies.

I think a lesson on road safety should be included in the school syllabus. Roads have improved quite a lot in our surroundings, highways have been broadened, and paver blocks in uncountable numbers have been installed in the countryside roads and the small alleys of my home area. Even then it is astonishing to say that young boys succumbed to injuries in road accidents. In urban areas, vehicles have been increasing and they ply continuously which it takes many minutes for pedestrians to cross the road. Prosperous farmers, engineers, and self-employed business men, all owned their cars to ply on the road, and some of them would hire a driver to take them to the destination; sometimes they would hire a novice driver ( sometimes it becomes difficult to know whether the novice drivers possess a valid driving license or not), and such novice drivers create havoc in the road by dashing with other vehicles.

Modern roads are built with modern vehicles in mind. Roads are also renewed every year, but the depressing thing is that even after road improvement in all the places, accidents occur frequently not knowing to save the riders, and the riders have to be sent to the hospitals. When hired drivers are taken in good faith and they drive in the busy street, it is dismal to say that they again make accidents, and most of the time, the people sitting inside the vehicles get injured. In gravel roads, vehicle accidents occur, in asphalt roads, accidents occur, concrete pavements are made to distinguish between the pavement and roads, and still road accidents occur. Great attention has been paid to the road surface, and it is important since tires maintain a good vehicle adhesion in such roads preventing accidents caused by skids and overturns. In such roads also accidents are made by drivers.

We come to read in newspapers that from a particular month of the year, the price of vehicles will be increased, but we never hear what resolution has been taken to curtail road accidents, or what particular guidelines will have to be sternly followed by the drivers.

In some streets, the maximum speed of 40 km per hour is being advised and written in the street where national parks lay, but there are instances, we come to read, drivers drive recklessly violating many rules, knocking pedestrians and wild animals.

I hope a time will come, people will follow the traffic rules, so that no fatal accidents happen on the highway and in countryside alleys. Modern highways now have a flood of vehicles, but it is the duty of the drivers to drive carefully. Roads are divided into lanes, each wide enough for all normal vehicles, therefore, I hope in the future there will be no road accidents for school children and pedestrians. 

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