Traffic police opt for shock

The DCP of traffic police, Sudheer Babu, believes this ‘shock therapy’ works best in making people aware and make them abide by traffic rules.

 

“One of the clips online shows a young girl on a bike ramming her vehicle into a bus. While many started blaming the bus driver, CCTV clearly shows she actually jumped the signal to fatal results. Putting all this out on social media makes people pay a little more attention to the issue,” he says.

 

But the trend is also being found on other FB pages. A video titled Live Accidents Captured in Hyderabad, was posted on the Hyderabad Traffic Police suggestions page, which is run by Khalid Hasan, a computer hardware professional. “It was quite an eye opener and that’s why I shared it on Facebook. In two weeks the video has got 80,000 likes and 500 shares, and that’s unlike anything I have posted on social media so far,” he adds.

 

Sudheer Babu also adds that these videos have been previously used during awareness camps in schools and that it was only natural to put them up on social media.

 

But isn’t it insensitive, considering some of the people in the accidents have lost their lives? “I wouldn’t look at it in a negative light because our only motive is to make people aware of what’s happening so that they can be more careful on roads,” says Sudheer.

 

The traffic department is now planning to challan people on two-wheelers without helmets, since in most road accidents involving bikes, head injuries prove to be the most fatal, which can be avoided with the use of helmets.