Sikri, a small village near Ballabhgarh in Haryana, had little to distinguish itself. When it did make news, it was for all the wrong reasons. Spread across four km on the Golden Quadrilateral stretch on NH-2 (Delhi-Kolkata), Sikri, it was found to be the most accident prone village in the state, with 12 people killed in 25 accidents in 2006 at the village’s only pedestrian crossing, and 14 killed in 2003. Sikri clocked a high mainstream traffic volume at well above 15,772 passenger car units in one direction alone. There was no zebra crossing, only a median cutting the village’s Piyala junction, no road markings and no signage; the village stood precariously on the highway to death. Until the Institute of Road Traffic Education (IRTE) came along, that is. Even as the fatalities looked set to rise with the highway traffic volume increasing and the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) planning to convert it into a six-lane stretch, IRTE initiated a road safety awareness programme for NH-2. After a series of surveys and door-to-door visits, a count of cycles and two-wheelers in Sikri, observations between December 14, 2006 and January 14, 2007 on why people were sprinting across the busy highway and why and how the accidents were taking place, IRTE got into action. “While highways are being widened, road engineering factors, along with local and cultural problems, are quickly bypassed, and that is exactly what was happening here. People were dying over a four-km stretch on the highway as a large number of vehicles were moving in the wrong direction at the Piyala junction, the only pedestrian crossing. Rectifying it would have brought down the fatalities and that is how we decided to adopt Sikri as the first Ideal Road Safety Village in the country,” says Rohit Baluja, president of the Delhi-based IRTE. According to IRTE surveys, 1791.5 PCUs moved in the wrong direction at Piyala junction, including 80 per cent motorised vehicles. As the village panchayat, the school principal and the deputy commissioner, Faridabad, grappled for a solution, IRTE came up with a simple plan. “We just need a 150-m-long service lane/slip roads on the opposite side of Piyala junction connecting behind the mazaar, so that the people don’t need to go the wrong way on the highway’s main carriageway, and the accidents are bound to come down. Supplemented with proper road signage, reflective kerb stones on the median nose at the junction and the village will lose its tag of being the most accident prone,” says Amandeep Bedi, head of the Centre of Analysis and Research in Road Safety at IRTE. For now, IRTE has put up signs across 10 km in and around the village, painted road markings and kerb stones and given Sikri its only zebra crossing at Piyala junction. IRTE’s team of four went to every household in Sikri, fixing reflective yellow stickers on bicycles, carts and tempos because most accidents involved non-motorised vehicles at night. They put up posters around the village explaining road signs and road safety directions. Then the panchayat came into the picture. After demanding another road crossing on the highway, it finally settled for the IRTE plan to create a service lane and decided to fund it. With Rs 2 crore, the Sikri panchayat was one of the richest in the area and did not mind spending Rs 10-12 lakh on a new service road. With the DC Faridabad G. Anupama backing the plan, construction on the service lane will begin in a month and NHAI has decided to help supervise its construction. IRTE also went to the Sikri Government Senior School between December 2006 and January 2007 as most children use cycles. “The IRTE staff held camps, teaching the students about road safety, crossing the highway, road signs and fixed yellow stickers on their cycles. Today our students are road safety conscious and even tell their parents about it,” says principal Jai Lata. The small things have made a massive difference in the road safety quotient of the village, with accidents dipping in just a little over a month. NHAI officials are confident that the service lane plan will also work and have decided to replicate the ‘Ideal Road Safety Village’ system at other places. A month after Sikri is made a safer village on NH-2, IRTE will go to Bhauti Pratap Pur village near Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh, which has an equally dismal road accident record. Good luck Bhauti Pratap Pur, says a 5,000-strong Sikri.
