Deputy Commissioner Hephsiba Rani Korlapati said on Wednesday that 130 road accidents have been registered in Udupi district since January this year. Hence, awareness programmes would be launched to bring down the number of accidents, she said.
Chairing a Road Safety Committee meeting at the District Offices Complex here, Ms. Korlapati said that officers should review programmes launched for road safety and submit a report. The departments concerned should give clear information about every accident that takes place in their jurisdiction. She also sought details of the accidents that had taken place in the last three years with taluk-wise details.
She directed the officers to rope in school students to draw paintings focussing on road safety on the compound walls of their schools under the guidance of their art teachers. They should do this in the form of drawing competition. The progress achieved would be reviewed in the first week of August.
Art teachers who are successful in this endeavour would be felicitated during the Independence Day celebrations. If private schools also joined this campaign voluntarily, then art teachers of those schools too would be felicitated, she said.
School buses and autorickshaws should be directed not to carry more children than permitted by the rules. The school headmasters should have complete details of the school vehicles, their owners and drivers and the route on which these vehicles operated.
Road safety awareness programmes should be conducted every Saturday in four schools in every gram panchayat. Some students were driving two-wheelers without licence. To check this, the 104 pre-university colleges should be divided into three groups with a supervisor for each group, she said.
These supervisors should collect details of the two-wheelers in each college and give information to the departments concerned, she said.
To this, an officer said that if the college governing boards controlled the number of motorcycles on their premises, the number of students driving without licence could be brought down by 30 %.
Ms. Korlapati directed the officers to hold road safety awareness programmes every month. They could use art, Yakshagana and documentaries for this purpose, she said.
Superintendent of Police Nisha James was present.
