Righting the wrong-side traffic on Sarjapur Road

Traffic violations galore on this busy stretch off Outer Ring Road

By GAURI SATYA

The residents of Sarjapur Road are spoiled for choice. How would you like to get run over today? A speeding bike? An auto? A car or an SUV? Even a truck if you’re lucky. All plying on the ‘wrong’ side of the road.

It all started when the stretch of the road from the Sarjapur Road Fire Station to Iblur junction was made a ‘no right turn’ zone – no break in the median for about a kilometre or so. This was done to ease traffic hotspots elsewhere and it has served its purpose. The side effect, however, is the flood of wrong-way traffic – particularly of people trying to take the turning near Motherhood hospital.

Sign boards are put up but to no avail. When it comes to blatantly breaking rules, there is no bar on age, caste, gender or class. There are no footpaths to speak of and what little there is gets taken over by these vehicles taking the wrong side sometimes, overflowing into the middle of the lane and on to the incoming traffic. Even superheroes would not risk being pedestrians here. Trying to stop the wrongdoers and having a sensible conversation has proved useless. Nobody cares. Over the last six months, there were at least 30 serious accidents on this stretch of the road, of which three were fatal – and they were all pedestrians.

Wrong side driving is a common affair. Even school kids are not spared. Last week, a person died because of wrong side driving. It was a collision between two bikes coming from opposite directions. The traffic police have no intent of fining the offenders. They only want to catch people who are not wearing helmets. It’s okay to drive with a helmet on the wrong side. What about those potential murderers who are risking others’ lives while driving in the wrong direction? How many more lives need to be sacrificed due to the traffic police’s apathy?

That is when the residents of Divyasree Elan Apartments decided to take matters to the authorities. We formed a group and approached the Bellandur traffic police for help. We met inspector Rajasekhar and requested their assistance. He promised to allocate traffic cops to man the junction where the wrong-side traffic begins.

For the last three months, the traffic cops are on the spot controlling the traffic. Fines were levied on the spot and challans were mailed in the hundreds. When the cops are around, the wrong-way traffic is by far reduced, if not fully eliminated. It was the height of the summer and we tried to help by getting sponsors for a shade and a couple of chairs. It was truly, a People-Police-Partnership. We thank the traffic cops for their cooperation and look forward to more collaborations.

However, the cops cannot be there all the time. Though they are supposed to manage the junction from 7am to 9pm, due to various reasons of staffing and other issues, this does not materialise. When the cops are absent, we are back to square one with the flood of wrong-side traffic. Many times, even in the presence of a cop, some brash motorists race past him. Some even threaten the cop, quoting some local politician or another. What we need is a permanent solution to this. People who break rules while fully aware they may cause injury should not be able to get away with it. Be it in the form of one-way spikes or a reconfiguration of the roads and lanes, we need a solution that works. We need a way out that is permanent and does not depend on the availability of cops. We need it now before we have another tragedy on our hands.

With this vision, we procured an appointment with Additional Commissioner Hithendra on July 3rd, 2018. He was quite responsive to our grievances. While spikes and higher fines were ruled out due to the lack of supporting laws, he has suggested a reconfiguration of the roads that will start on a trial basis with the support of HSR Layout traffic police.

We have an active Twitter stream that we use to notify the authorities of the daily status of our road. More than a hundred tweets were sent out. Again, the traffic cops were quite responsive to us and we are thankful to that. We have posted emails to MLA Arvind Limbavali regarding this problem and the larger infrastructure issues in the area. And finally, here we are trying to garner more support for our cause through the news media. All in the hope that when our children head out to school, they don’t get mowed down by wrong-side traffic.

Gauri Satya is a retired software engineer, a part-time educator and writer.

© Oorvani Foundation/Open Media Initiative. Also available at Citizen Matters