Concerns raised over safety of school autos

Visakhapatnam: Even as parents focus on every aspect of their wards, the possibility of not paying as much attention to their transport preferred for schools is high.

This has often led to facing risk when children head to their schools. Apparently, the risk factor is attributed to the regional transport office and traffic department as they often fail to monitor auto-rickshaws that ferry school children to the institutions and back home.

Absence of strict surveillance is resulting in a greater number of accidents. On Wednesday alone, two auto-rickshaws met with an accident in two different areas in Visakhapatnam, including Madhurawada and Dondaparthi junction. How far is it safe for children to travel in the three-wheeler? This has become a major concern for the parents.

As per the norms, an auto-rickshaw could load the vehicle with six children. However, most of them ferry not less than 10 students per trip. Although special drives are being taken up by the concerned department officials at regular intervals, school auto-rickshaws fail to draw much attention when compared to passenger auto-rickshaws.

Boarding more children in the vehicle, over-speeding and violating traffic norms are some of the main reasons leading to accidents.

In Visakhapatnam, close to 4,000 auto-rickshaws have been engaged to pick and drop students to various educational institutions and back home.

Does the auto-rickshaw driver have a clean record? Does he have a valid driving licence? Is he following traffic norms or overloading the vehicle? Such aspects are not being considered by the parents. In many price-conscious families, parents engage an auto-rickshaw after a lot of bargaining. In such scenarios, safety norms often take a backseat. “Along with the officials concerned, the responsibility of sending children to schools in a safe mode of transport rests on the parents as well. On several occasions, children board auto-rickshaws at the last minute. This leaves an untold pressure on the drivers to rush to the school on time. Such situations should be avoided,” suggests GC Raja Ratnam, Deputy Transport Commissioner.

Already, the focus has been laid to prevent drunken driving, triple-riding, absence of helmet while commuting, among other violations. “Given the negligence of the school auto-rickshaw drivers, we have increased our surveillance on them. The prime focus will be on intensifying our surveillance on school auto-rickshaws followed by a special drive to streamline the irregularities,” says K Srinivasa Rao, DCP-1.

With the available manpower, the RTO carries out special drives to curb traffic violations. They, however, turn out to be insufficient. If such drives could be considered along with the traffic police at frequent intervals, accidents could be averted to a large extent and public transport becomes safer for children.