vimal

The road users must learn how to behave when sitting behind the steering wheels. There is no substitute for self-discipline and self-regulation.

Presently, the Bhopal city traffic suffers from many shortcomings. The 4 most glaring drawbacks are: Lax licensing procedures, wanton disobedience of rules, poor infrastructure and paucity of traffic policemen.

It is common knowledge that a driving license can be obtained without going through the prescribed tests provided the right palms are greased and/or an approach is made through a tout with the right connections in the licensing offices. Those who obtain their licenses in this manner are ill trained and unfit to be on the road behind the steering wheels. They are in fact licensed to kill.

Poor infrastructure is another major drawback. The condition of major roads in some of the cities of Madhya Pradesh is somewhat better now than before but the work on the installation of automatic traffic signals has been painfully slow. There are a large number of important traffic crossings in the capital city of Bhopal that are without proper signals or policemen. The Hoshagabad Road in front of MP Nagar, city's major trading centre has a number of traffic crossings but half of the crossings are without traffic signals and most of the time these remain without traffic policemen.

There are many more such crossings without traffic policemen or signals. The condition of other cities and towns of Madhya Pradesh is worse. In view of the exponential increase in the quantum of traffic, the administration must increase the strength of the traffic police by 3 times the present number if it does not want to be overwhelmed by the traffic problems.

Let us hope that the administration will wake up to the mounting traffic problems and take speedy measures to address them on priority basis before it is too late.