Coimbatore: Students of various colleges along with law keepers and medical practitioners came together for a noble cause and created awareness on road safety among motorists in a mega campaign here today.
Coimbatore: Students of various colleges along with law keepers and medical practitioners came together for a noble cause and created awareness on road safety among motorists in a mega campaign here today.
Commissioner of City Police Sumit Sharan, Deputy Commissioner (law and order) L. Saravanan Balaji, Dr.S. Rajasekaran, Managing trustee of Uyir and others attended the event.
As one of the major projects of Uyir Trust, they have been forming ‘Uyir Clubs’ in all the colleges of Coimbatore where the members of the club have roped in students to carry ‘in campus’ activities and also ‘on the road’ activities to promote road safety.
The members of the recently launched ‘Uyir Clubs’, an initiative by Uyir Trust conducted the campaigns in more than 20 prominent traffic signals in the city, where they lauded those who followed traffic rules and also advised those who violated.
500+ students from 16 Colleges of Coimbatore City participated in road safety awareness campaign at 20 important signals of Coimbatore city. Signals in Avinashi Road, Mettupalaym Road, Trichy Road, Pakakkad Road, Pollachi Road, Sathy road were covered as part of this mega launch.
In all these junctions, UYIR volunteers along with Coimbatore City Police appreciated and distributed sweets to people who were wearing helmets and seat belts. They also promoted the need for the same amongst defaulters by holding placards with road safety slogans.
“It is expected that this will significantly improve compliance for wearing the helmets and seat belts and avoiding rash driving,” said Dr. S. Rajasekaran, Managing Trustee of Uyir Trust.
He said that Uyir was established to initiate a ‘People’s movement for road safety’ and added that the motto of UYIR was ‘Life is in your hands’.
"Uyir believes that if everybody is safe on the roads, then our roads will be automatically be safe,” he opined.
“Due to the various measures of Uyir and along with the city police, the rate of the accidents in Coimbatore has been significantly reduced by 21 per cent. In the next few months, Uyir is also looking at more innovative projects like ‘Kutty Cops’, where every school children will be encouraged to be a police at home and be sensitised to the need for road safety,” opined Dr. Rajasekaran.
After the successful completion of installing high resolution ANPR Cameras in five junctions, Uyir has also completed the installation in 15 more junctions and erected 11 new signal poles, which will become functional in the next few weeks.
With more than 100 members per college, the volunteers of the club have been carrying out road safety awareness within the campus by encouraging students to wear helmet, fastening seat belts and promoting awareness on the hazard of using mobile phones while driving, fast and rash driving and jumping traffic lights.
According to sources, India has the highest rate of road traffic incidents in the world with more than 1,85,000 people dying every year. Around three per cent of our national GDP is lost in primary treatment of accident injuries, claim sources.