Students from a couple of schools off VIP Road and their parents on Tuesday attended road safety workshops where officers from the traffic wing of the Bidhannagar Police Commissionerate demonstrated how to safely ride two-wheelers and overtake heavy vehicles.
Many of the parents who attended the sessions, organised by the commissionerate, use two-wheelers to drop their children to school and pick them up after classes.
The events were held two days after a Class VII girl, Hiya Roy, who was riding pillion on her mother’s scooter, died in an accident on VIP Road, near the Kaikhali intersection.
At the workshops, the attendees were told how to use a vehicle’s indicators, headlights and horns to alert the driver of the vehicle before overtaking it.
The cops also explained that the drivers of heavy vehicles have several blind spots and told the participants that they need to ensure that the driver of a truck has spotted them or is aware of their presence before trying to overtake it.
“Shall we then stop overtaking from the left? We do it because we only keep to the left side of the road,” asked Shatabisha Maity, a parent who attended one of the workshops.
“Ideally, you should not. Even when vehicles are stationary at a signal, two-wheeler-riders should properly alert the drivers while riding past them,” replied an officer.
The Telegraph reported on Tuesday that the Bidhannagar Police Commissionerate would start a road safety campaign targeted at guardians of schoolchildren who use two-wheelers to commute and to drop the children to school or tuition class and pick them up from there.
Gaurav Sharma, police commissioner of Bidhannagar, said the two workshops were the beginning of a series of road safety sessions lined up over the next few weeks.
“We will organise these workshops at multiple schools. We will involve parents in the workshops and demonstrate to them safe ways to ride and overtake. The focus will be on heavy vehicles. We are also going to organise workshops where we will demonstrate the blind spots that the drivers of heavy vehicles face,” Sharma told this newspaper on Tuesday.
An officer of the commissionerate’s traffic wing explained to the participants that those who drive big and heavy vehicles, such as trucks and buses, have several blind spots around them.
Blind spots are those areas on the road that a driver cannot see from his seat while looking forward or through the rear-view or side mirrors.
Traffic police personnel from the Baguiati traffic guard demonstrated the areas that are blind spots for drivers of heavy vehicles and explained why two-wheelers should not linger around these spots for too long.
“In the typical traffic conditions in the city, it becomes difficult for the driver and helper of heavy vehicles to spot two-wheelers and other smaller vehicles in the blind spots,” another officer from the commissionerate’s traffic wing said.
“These blind spots are located directly in front of the truck or bus, directly behind it and on either side below the driver’s and the helper’s windows. Two-wheeler-riders, for their own safety, must alert the driver of the heavy vehicle and wait for it to move aside before trying to overtake it.”
On Sunday, Hiya Ray, a Class VII student of The Newtown School, was flung off the scooter she was riding when her mother lost control of it while trying to overtake a dump truck near the Kaikhali intersection. The girl was then crushed under the wheels of the truck.
Sharmila Ray Chakra-borty, the mother, had lost control of the two-wheeler after its handle got snagged in the truck’s rear fender.
