24th Road Safety Week to Began with Drive Against Drunken Driving
Theme is “Stay Alive, Don’t Drink and Drive”
Make Road Safety a Social Movement- Dr. C P Joshi
Curtain raiser: The 24th road safety week began. The theme for Road Safety Week celeberated from 1st January to 7th January 2013, is “Stay Alive, don’t drink and drive”. The emphasis would be on spreading awareness against drunken driving.
The valedictory function of 24th Road Safety Week held on 7th January 2013 at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi. “Road Safety Week” is observed all over the country in the month of January every year in order to spread road safety awareness.
Road safety requires a multi pronged endeavour from various stakeholders such the transport sector, highway engineers, police, health sector, insurance sector, automobile manufacturers, legal sector, civic agencies, educational institutions, NGOs and the community at large. It is felt that collective effort would make a significant impact on the incidence of road accidents and help mitigate the scourge of road accident related deaths and injuries.
Dr. CP Joshi, the Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways (RT&H) has appealed to all stake holders to join hands with the Government in its effort to make roads safer and to develop a sustainable road transport system Pan India.
The number of persons killed in road accidents in India is the highest in the world.In the year 2011, more than 1.42 lakh people have been killed in nearly 4.9 lakh road accidents reported so far.
These numbers translate into roughly one road accident per minute and one road accident death every four minutes for India. Of these 24,655 road accidents were caused due to drunken driving resulting in 10,553 deaths and 21,148 injuries in India.
The scourge of drunken driving needs to be eliminated by spreading awareness and through stringent enforcement measures. The state governments have also been requested to ensure removal of liquor shops from the vicinity of Highways.
Children & youth are among the most vulnerable on the roads. The age group (15 to 24 years) accounted for 30.3% of total road accident casualties during the year 2011. It is the Ministry’s endeavour to make road safety a social movement in partnership with schools and Universities. Educational institutions can play a very important role in promoting road safety.
They can organize road safety activities at school & colleges and create opportunities for students to engage in road safety programmes.
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