Vehicle driving education will bring road incidents down
Objective
Statistics says that there is 1 death in every three minutes due to road accidents in India. According to road collision article in Wikipedia “In New Delhi, the capital of India, the frequency of traffic collisions is 40 times higher than the rate in London, the capital of the United Kingdom.” [1]. (A lot of statistical data can be presented here but the problem will be same until some action is not taken to handle this) India, where number of vehicles are less than any developed country but more road accidents. These accidents causes many people to lose their life, property, money and time. As a result this causes damage to human life either physically or economically. If by some means, we can reduce these accidents it will be a great achievement for human life in India.
Motivation
frequently occurring accidents on roads which causes damage to human life. If one analyse any accidents, it can be easily find that it happened due to someone fault. Whoever was faulty, but it causes damage to human life afterwards. We can’t stop natural accidents but can reduce risks due to such accidents by taking some precautionary safety steps. For example, chance of death/damage in an accident can be reduced by 50% just by using seat-belt in a car. These deaths/damage can be further reduced by proper follow-up with traffic rules.
Problem Statement
There exist road driving instructions for every country, state and city. Some countries applies one set of rules across all the states some apply similar rules (with some differences) to each state. Now it is drivers responsibility to go through these rules and follow-up while drivings. In India, there is provision of written test and road test to get a driving licence. Unfortunately it is not being followed everywhere except few major cities. One can also get a licence very easily by paying bribe to concern officers. This way drivers don’t get chance to go through the road driving instructions and they don’t follow proper rules while driving on roads. If anyhow we can manage for drivers to go through road driving rules, we can reduce the number of accidents on roads. Not all the people who gone through rules, do follow while driving. But the number of drivers who follow road driving rule can be increased. Also, there are people who wants to follow traffic rules but due to lack of proper knowledge, they don’t follow them.
Implementation
Our aim is to teach people/drivers about road driving rules such that they follow these rules while driving. Safe driving will also reduce number of road accidents. At present since most of us don’t know proper rules and meaning of road signs. We need to implement a system such that everyone knows about road driving rules and proper meaning of road signs. There can be two ways of implementation.
- School instructions as a course in Secondary and Higher Secondary Education
- 32 hours (4 days or more) in class instructions from driving schools
Secondary and Higher Secondary Education Course Instructions
It is true that secondary and higher secondary education age is critical for all students. All the good and bad things they learn at this age, do last longer (sometime never lost). If a student learn good things at this stage, he never forget those good things and always try to implement in his/her life. Hence, if we manage to arrange road driving rules as instructional course for secondary and higher secondary education it will be great success. This way not only students will be benefited but they can also teach to their parents about these rules. Since this will directly related to their daily life, students will find it and easy and start implementing as soon as they know about these.
There are only limited number of road driving rules and road signs. These can be divided into three categories.
1. Category 1 driving rules and signs for Class 6, 7 and 8 (Secondary Education)
2. Category 2 driving rules and signs for Class 9 and 10 (High School Education)
3. Category 3 driving rules and signs for Class 11 and 12 (Intermediate Education)
Due to huge pressure from other courses and competitive exams, this course (for each above mentioned category) should be designed in such a way that students don’t feel any extra pressure. Only Pass and Fail should be awarded as result from this exam. Remember, our aim is to teach people about road driving rules and road signs, not to judge them by grades. Also, Pass/Fail award will not create any stress among students as grades from other subjects do.
Same course can be repeated each year under each category or each year it can include some new instructions (including previous year instructions) under each category. Class instructions can be once (or twice) in a week and exam will be half yearly. At the end students must pass 4 exams in Category 1 and 3 exams in Category 2 and 3 (every half yearly (or semester) exam is counted as one exam). In case of failure to pass number of required exams, schools/board provide a provision of re-exam for this subject only. Student can make 3 attempts to pass required number of exams. These attempts can be made at any time depending on students wish. A summary of course division is given in Table 1.
Table 1: Road Driving Rules and Road Sign course division
Category
|
Education
|
Total No of Half Yearly/Semester Exams
|
Min Exams Required to Pass
|
Board/
School |
Category 1
|
Secondary
|
6
|
4
|
All
|
Category 2
|
High School
|
4
|
3
|
All
|
Category 3
|
Intermediate
|
4
|
3
|
All
|
Driving School Instructions
Transport departments in each state should identify driving schools (or give licence to driving schools) who provide in-class instructions about road driving rules and road signs including road safety issues. These schools should charge appropriate fee from students. These instructions must be completed by each students in driving school before they go for road driving test with instruction driver. If any student miss any of the instructional class, he/she must go for make-up class before going to road driving with school instructor.
Proper functioning (delivering instructions) of driving school must be monitored by transport department.
It should be mandatory for a driver with learning licence that he/she must drive (or learn) the car/bike with a person (in passenger seat) having minimum driving experience of 2 years. He/she should not drive car/bike with more than one passenger while learning the car/bike. Once he/she got the licence, there must be restricted passengers in car/bike for certain years after he/she got the permanent licence. (new drivers make more mistakes than experienced, limited passengers will cause less distraction and less damage to others life)
Why one should go to Driving School??
This is open question that why one should go to driving school and spent money there. The government can answer/implement this in indirect way. Every driver have an insurance and he pay premium for that insurance. This premium might be low which can be increased by increasing insured amount. Drivers who took driving courses have less probability of collision because they know rules well and will not hit any car. This way there is less chance that insurance company is paying any compensation for this trained driver. So if driver has gone to driving school, there is less chance of collision so Insurance company can give a discount to persons who learnt driving from certified driving schools. This discount should be significant if one don’t go to driving school. This will motivate people to go to driving school and have proper training/knowledge about road driving rules and road signs. And finally number of collisions will be decreased.
Insurance company can also give certain discount to students who passed all the exams during their secondary and higher secondary education. This will motivate student to perform well in this course during their education.
Driving Records and Insurance Companies
Driving records (Fines, tickets, challans, accidents/collisions etc.) should be shared with insurance company. Based on driver’s history, they can decide insurance premium. Insurance premium must go down with time if a driver have no incident history and go higher if driver is involved in any incidents. This will motivate drivers to drive safe. Safe driving will always results into less collisions, which is our aim.
Road Signs and Their Placement
In India most of the places are lacking road signs (except national and state highways). While releasing a tender of road construction, PWD department (or other concerned department) must mention about proper placement road signs and road markings. Proper placement of road signs must be cross checked after completion of road work. There are instructions about type of road signs and their placement, contractor must follow them. If road is constructed and contractor is failed to place proper road signs, concerned engineer must be responsible for that. There should be a system where a normal person can complain about it (Because now he/she knows about proper road signs, it’s meaning and necessity) and action should be taken.
Conclusions
Our aim is to reduce frequency of road accidents, god is not there to save us. It’s our job to drive safe and proper. We can reduce the chances of accidents. Better knowledge and better implementation will lead us towards better life.
Remarks
The above described implementation about driving school is applicable to all kind of vehicles which require driving licence.
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