By
R Swaminathan
Foodboard
travel was recently in the news because of the loss of life of four
students in Chennai. While all modes of transport have their own
risks these days, public transport especially by road transport
buses carries additional disadvantage and is a chief contributor to
statistics on road fatalities. We also get to hear about other risks
which end in fatalities from near railway tracks and level crossings
and highways due to rash driving.
When
the authorities need to bother themselves about how to avoid such
accidents in buses like closing doors once the vehicle is about to
move or just before it halts at a stop, one must ponder how the
frequency of footboard travel has risen in recent years due to youth
psychology. Young boys going to schools somehow get the courage to
cling to the rickety fast moving vehicles with satchels on their
shoulders or backs. Many affluent ones never bother as they are
driven to the place of learning safely and fetched on their way back
home. But the poor ones depend on public transport to commute to the
school or college which invariably is quiet far from the place they
live. House rent is one factor which increases the distance between
the two and parents just can't help it.
What
starts as a trial to travel freely on the footboard of a bus becomes
an act of heroism to show their macho image in their adolescent
years. Much influenced by the soaps and cinemas they often see, the
boys almost cultivate a habit to wantonly travel just outside the
vehicle to impress somebody. They hang out there in spite of repeated
exhortations by the bus crew and also try to board or alight from the
vehicle when it is moving. They have seen their own friends or
relatives perish that way or be maimed for life and living with
crutches. Nothing instils a fear in them.
The
kids don't seem to appreciate the enormous and painstaking efforts
the parents take to raise them from childhood to manhood, thinking
that it is just only part of their duty towards them. Some think they
are being reared for the parents' future benefits and security.
Influenced largely by peer pressure they decide to even lay down
their lives on the roads. Only proper training and teaching at a very
young age, say, in elementary school level itself about the road
sense and traffic discipline will infuse good qualities in them and
prepare them to be useful to family and society. Elders should never
lose a moment or opportunity to make them realise on the need to live
safely and longer. Cinemas should remove scenes showing rude or
romantic behaviour in public vehicles so that the kids don't gain a
gut feeling from their role models on the screen. Just as smoking and
drinking can be discouraged by abhoring them, footboard travel also
can be banned in the visual medium.
The
first and foremost question everybody should ask himself is whether
he or she was born to die on the road taking risks all the way. While
it is another story to be killed due to rash or negligent driving or
vehicle failure, man-made deaths like footboard travel deaths should
soon become stories of the distant past. Rules are being framed to
make travel safe and secure by school vehicles for the tiny tots
including employing dependable drivers and through proper maintenance
of the vehicle's body and machinery. Peak hour travel can be made
easier for school or college going youth if density of the traffic is
properly studied and special services are operated where required.
There are so many pro-active steps the authorities need to take, but
safety must begin at home.
