“It all started with a friend and I who were fighting a case with the Karnataka government over a clause in the state’s Motor Vehicles Act. We won this case and this prompted us to take up spreading the much-needed awareness about road safety among people. Thus, I gave up my job in Bangalore, and I have shifted base to Coimbatore as I have dedicated my time, self and life towards educating people on road safety.” Ramasubramanian begins.
In the year 2015 an NGO christened 'Drive Without Borders' came into being. Since the last month onwards, in the name of this NGO, Ramasubramanian has reached out to four schools where he educates the students on the importance of road safety.
Throwing light on this, Ramasubramanian tells that he has created three presentations of which the third one is a commercial one. The first one is for students of class one to six and this one educates the students on the basics of road rules, like wearing a helmet and seat belt and honking only when it is required among others. The second presentation targets the older students from class seven upwards.
“This second presentation on road safety awareness, for the older crowd covers aspects like the ten golden rules of road safety, most common mistakes road users make, most irritable habits of road users, how to ride or drive on the highways, how to claim insurance, how to cope with road accidents, first-aid tips for road accident victims and so on.” Ramasubramanian says.
Each session lasts 90-minutes and it includes the presentation, videos of accidents caught on camera and it ends with an interactive session where the students have their doubts cleared and questions answered. Ramasubramanian has delivered these sessions in five schools in the city. By June this year, he has plans of covering all the schools. He shares with us that he will reach out to corporate houses in the city too to educate their workforce on road safety. His aim is to ensure that every citizen of Coimbatore is educated about road safety.
As we talk to him he reminds us that in one in every four minutes, an Indian dies in a road accident. Road accidents have emerged as a major public health problem globally, and more so in India where almost 5 lakh accidents occurred last year, killing 1,46,000 people and leaving thrice the number injured. With one of the highest motorization growth rate in the world, accompanied by rapid expansion in road network and urbanization over the years, our country is faced with serious impacts on road safety levels.
According to the report compiled by the Transport Research Wing, the total number of road accidents increased by 2.5 per cent from 4,89,400 in 2014 to 5,01,423 in 2015. The total number of persons killed in road accidents increased by 4.6 per cent from 1,39,671 in 2014 to 1,46,133 in 2015. Road accident injuries have also increased by 1.4 per cent from 4,93,474 in 2014 to 5,00,279 in 2015. The severity of road accidents, measured in terms of number of persons killed per 100 accidents has increased from 28.5 in 2014 to 29.1 in 2015.
At a pan-India level, Tamil Nadu witnesses the maximum number of road accidents every year. In 2015 Tamil Nadu recorded 69,059 road accidents. Last year in 2016, the accident rates in Coimbatore showed an alarming figures 1377 cases.
While vehicle population is doubling up, the roads still stay at the same size. Out of the one lakh vehicles that gets added to the existing vehicular volume, 75% of them are two-wheelers. Last year alone, we have recorded close to 285 deaths due to two-wheeler accidents in Coimbatore.