Road Safety in Goa

Oct 21: Open Forum

We attended an Open Forum for Road Safety Management which was initiated by the Chief Minister, with the Minister for Transport, the PWD minister, and the government officials. They had invited the public to provide suggestions to improve the safety on our roads. It was heartening to see so many people who felt strongly about the cause. And they presented fairly detailed write ups on specific points for improvement.

   

The CM has promised the public that the inputs will be analysed and an action plan will be shared within 15 days, and implementation will begin as early as Dec 1. It’s a good start to the process.

We also provided our inputs:

• Goa has better roads than most other places. People from Goa may disagree, but having seen roads elsewhere, I can confidently say this. This also means the average speed in Goa is higher! Hence the impact of any crash will likely be higher. It will be better if Goa adopts a policy and traffic calming measures to curtail maximum speed.
• Goa is undoubtedly the most popular destination for tourists. The holiday partying and access to alcohol means there is every chance that some drivers are not in full control of their senses or reflexes. Creative ideas should help enforce discipline without affecting tourism. In fact, it should enhance the reputation of Goa as a safe destination.
• Apart from this, an emphasis on building superb public transport, inculcating right safety mindset through school curriculum, and an immediate focus on black spots was urged. Of course, we have to address some immediate issues, but as we do it, we recommend a holistic safe systems approach for a sustainable solution.

The event recording is available here

Thanks to our friend and a passionate advocate for road safety – Sanjeev Sardessai – who invited us to this event.

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Nov 5: Road Safety at IMS Goa

We conducted a road safety session for the students and staff of the Institute of Maritime Studies (IMS), Goa.     The attendance was over a 100 people, a majority of them young students who will soon take on the mantle for their families. Interestingly, the motto of IMS is “Suraksha Siddha Haste” meaning Security in Competent Hands! And the students had created several posters related to Safety in their workshops. And the focus of our talk is also the Tenets of Proactive Driving so that with competency, alertness, awareness, and anticipation we continue to enjoy the ride.

At least 10 people in the audience had been involved in a road accident.  The discussion on blind spots was an eye-opener (pun intended!) for most. The small exercise to bust the myth of multitasking was very well received. It was wonderful to have the 100 people stand up and take the Road Safety Pledge in unison.

After the session, Francis came up to us and said that it shook him, and he promised to implement it seriously and to take the message to his family. Tanuj pointed out other violations – like the people who encourage children to stand up with their heads poking out of the sun roof. One observation is that many of the two wheelers tend to overtake from the left side of the vehicle ahead – this seems to be quite prevalent in Goa. They are probably ignorant about blind spots. This should be a very important part of the training. Ajay pointed out the higher average speeds in Goa due to better roads and therefore the need to curb speed.

A special “Thank You” goes out to Director Dipak Shah, and Deputy Director Ajay Tambwekar who organised the event.

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Nov 5 : Distraction of a different kind

On the way back from the session at IMS, we reached the Zuari bridge. Here, the two broad lanes narrow down to one small lane as the vehicles cross the old bridge over the Zuari river. So there is a bottleneck for a short stretch where the traffic is choked, moving slower in stops and starts. At one point, when we stopped, we were suddenly hit from behind by a car.

We pulled over and so did the driver behind. After checking that there was no damage to any person, we asked the driver what happened.

He said he had placed his phone on the passenger seat, and suddenly it fell down. He immediately reached down to pull up the phone. It was the moment when he took his eyes, his hands and his mind had all focused on a task other than driving, and he did not realise that he had to stop. He rear-ended our car!

Two things stand out for me:

1. The attraction for a cellphone is overpowering and that lead to the distraction. Even if we are not using it, we feel the need to have the cellphone accessible at all times. It would have been easy to wait till he got to a safe spot and then retrieved the phone, but the pull of the cellphone was very strong!
2. We often underestimate the risk associated with such actions. We believe we are very capable of controlling the vehicle when doing such tasks on the side. But a split second is enough to cause the damage. In the big picture, the time lost in stopping and addressing such a task would be trivial, so err on the side of caution and do not drive distracted. In fact, in a stop-start traffic, there has to be extra alertness.

Luckily for both of us, the speed was curtailed by the bottleneck. Imagine if this had happened on the highway at 70-80 kmph!

Even at this slow speed, the impact was such that we were thrown forward in our seats. The seat belts helped us, else our heads would have hit the steering / dashboard for sure.

The incident made we wonder why it happened to us on our way back from a road safety session. Imagine the roads 10, 20 years from now. How many vehicles will there be on the roads? What kind of driver behaviour will we see? What will be the speeds, the road conditions? Clearly, there is a lot that has to be done to make our roads safer!