A day after a Class VII student died after falling off a scooter and coming under the wheels of a dump truck on VIP Road, the Bidhannagar Police Commissionerate on Monday planned to start a road safety campaign.
As part of the campaign, which is slated to start later this week, officers from the commissionerate will hold sessions across schools to impart safety tips to students as well as parents.
Traffic guard personnel will organise a similar awareness campaign in neighbourhoods.
Bidhannagar police commissioner Gaurav Sharma said they have also planned to start a road safety campaign targeted at two-wheeler-riders.
The campaign, Sharma said, will aim to make the riders aware of the blind spots that drivers of heavy vehicles have.
“Heavy vehicles are large and the drivers have several blind spots (which they can’t see from their seat). We will tell two-wheeler-riders about the blind spots and how to overtake such vehicles safely,” Sharma told Metro on Monday.
The campaign will be held in areas covered by all nine traffic guards of the Bidhannagar commissionerate.
During the sessions, two-wheelers and other vehicles will be placed in the blind spots of heavy vehicles. The participants will be shown the smaller vehicles while being taken around a heavy vehicle.
Next, they will be made to sit in the driver’s seat of the heavy vehicle and asked to spot the vehicles placed in the blind spots.
“Such workshops will help make them aware of the significance of the blind spots. We will also show them safe overtaking manoeuvers,” said Sharma.
Drivers of heavy vehicles have four areas that are considered blind spots — at the front and rear and on either side, said a senior officer of the commissionerate.
Lorries now have additional mirrors, which have improved the drivers’ visibility but not eliminated the blind spots.
On Sunday, Hiya Ray, who was riding pillion on her mother’s scooter, was flung off the vehicle when her mother lost control of the two-wheeler while trying to overtake the dump truck near the Kaikhali intersection on VIP Road and crushed under the wheels of the heavy vehicle.
Sharmila Ray Chakraborty, the mother, lost control of the scooter after its handle got snagged in the truck’s rear fender.
Ray Chakraborty, who was admitted to a government hospital in Barasat on Sunday, was discharged on Monday.
A family member said she was inconsolable and kept asking how something like this could happen to her.
“She always ensured that both she and Hiya had their helmets on whenever they were riding the scooter. She is inconsolable and ate very little since returning home from the hospital,” a family member said.
On Monday, the authorities of The Newtown School, where Hiya was a student, postponed the farewell of the outgoing Class XII batch.
VIP Road, where the fatal accident happened, is one of the main thoroughfares that connects the airport with the rest of the city and witnesses a heavy traffic load throughout the day.
There are several bottlenecks on this road, including one at the Kaikhali crossing where a section of the
carriageway on both flanks is cordoned off by guardwalls to facilitate the construction of the New Garia-airport Metro line.
Heavy vehicles, including dump trucks and refrigerated vans, are regularly spotted driving down both flanks of the artery. Motorists who drive down the road regularly said many of the heavy vehicles move too fast, dangerously weaving in and out of
traffic.
“The drivers of these trucks and Matadors that ply throughout the day often don’t care about the safety of other road users,” said Saurav Rajurkar, who lives near the airport’s gate number 1 and drives to his office on Sarat Bose Road and back home every day.
