Mumbai traffic police to train college youth on how to avoid accidents

Without action, road traffic crashes will become the seventh leading cause of death globally by 2030," director of the public health programme at Bloomberg Philanthropies Dr Kelly Henning Henning had said during an event on Global Road Safety. On a mission to play its part in bringing down such road crash incidents in the city involving youngsters, Mumbai traffic police on Saturday launched a campaign to teach school and college students the importance of traffic rules and defensive driving techniques.

Citing how teenagers and youngsters are involved in many road accidents and crashes on a daily basis and lose their lives, the city traffic police department has created a detailed module that includes a collection of videos that will be shown to these children. The Mumbai Traffic Police announced this initiative through a YouTube video on Thursday.

Raj Tilak Roushan

In the video posted on YouTube and shared on various social media platforms, Raj Tilak Roushan, DCP, Traffic (Headquarters and Central), is seen urging the school management and principals to allow their team and provide them slots to be able to conduct sessions, where they can speak to the students and show them education videos on the topic. Speaking about the initiative Roushan said: "As part of this initiative, the department has begun approaching the school and college administrators and principals through our 50 divisional chowkies. It is imperative to impart lessons on traffic rules and defensive driving tactics to these people from a very young age.."

According to data from the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH), 11,168 youngsters under the age of 18 died in road accidents in 2019, accounting for 7.4 per cent of all accidents deaths. Of these 379 deaths were reported from all over Maharashtra.

A survey that was undertaken by SaveLIFE Foundation in collaboration with Mercedes-Benz Research and Development India, found that in Mumbai, 11 per cent of parents said their kids had been involved in an accident while commuting to or from school.