The Vadodara Traffic police will reach out to as many as 15,000 students in 647 schools in the city to educate them on various traffic issues. Commissioner of Police Rakesh Asthana said 25 college students (volunteers) will visit around 372 schools in the first phase and educate the students on aspects of road safety for six months. This exercise will then be followed in the remaining schools,he said. Asthana said: For the first 15 days,officers from the Traffic Department will accompany the volunteers to the respective schools so that the school representatives or monitors are appointed,who will in turn monitor the children using various transporation modes to check if they are following road safety rules. The Vadodara-based road safety NGO,Safety Awareness For Everyone (SAFE),had trained the volunteers for one week. Satyen Kolabkar from SAFE said: Among the trained volunteers are management students,home science students,doctors and engineering students,who will visit the schools across the city for the next six months educating them on traffic awareness issues three times a month,for three or four hours. For the next six months,the progress of various schools in implementing these capsules will be monitored. Kolabkar added: In foreign countries,traffic education is part of the school curriculum. With the help of audio-visual presentation and various films,we plan to use the concept of catch them young so that the children follow these rules. Meanwhile,the police said 12 women traffic brigade officers have been trained and are ready for deployment in various points in the city. They will be at the traffic points soon, he said. 1,584 accidents till JuneMeanwhile,even with Vadodara Traffic police coming up with new schemes to manage road traffic in Vadodara,figures of accident have increased to a record high. According to Asthana,till June 2009,1,584 accidents had occurred in the city of which a fatal accident had taken place after every two and a half days in which one or more person had died on the city roads. Elsewhere,in 2008,128 fatal accidents had happened,while in 2007,177 cases of fatal accidents were registered. He added that there is a need for 160 more personnel to man the citys increasing traffic and to curb the spurt in accident cases. Of the number of accident cases this year,40 per cent had occurred because of traffic negligence,while the rest happened due to other reasons, he said.
