Car rally flags off to spread road safety awareness in Bihar

A car rally was flagged off from Patna to Bodh Gaya on Saturday with the participants on a special mission to spread awareness about the issues of road safety and saving fuel.

Speaking to mediapersons, the organizer, Sumita Sahay, said that the purpose of the rally was to create awareness on road safety.

"The purpose of this rally is that driving is a safe skill and whenever a driver has to drive a car, he must be safe. This time, we are promoting safe driving and saving fuel. Our biggest agenda is that the drivers should be skillful and should understand the difficulties of other drivers on the road and should drive carefully,"Sahay

said.

The participants are expected to follow all traffic rules and ensure that they drive carefully to drive home the point of road safety.

"People in this rally want to spread the message that a driver should drive keeping road safety in mind. In this rally, we will observe all traffic rules." said participant, Vishnu Chaudhary, who also added that he was there for the adventure of the long drive to Bodhgaya.

Another participant,Nitin Krishna said that they will not be driving above 40 kmph.

"We want people to follow traffic rules. Speed does not matter in this rally and you don't have to drive at 80, 90 or 100 kmph. This rally is systematic. You have to drive at 20 to 40 kmph,"said Krishna.

A National Crime Records Bureau report revealed that more than 135,000 traffic collision-related deaths occur every year in India.

Road accidents are common in India, where roads are often of poor quality.

Transport officials attribute a large number of accidents in India to reckless driving and untrained drivers.

India's roads are among the world's most dangerous, claiming thousands of lives each year.

Enforcing road safety measures remains a huge problem, leading to one road accident every minute and a road accident death every four minutes in India.