Safety first

With reference to Vinayak Chatterjee’s “Roads far more unsafe than railways” (September 11), the article has put together some very relevant information supporting the argument for improving road travel safety. While there can’t be two views on the urgency to do everything possible to make road journeys safe, one is tempted to think loudly that safety has to be the primary concern in any mode of travel. The railways, for example, are not able to make their trains less accident-prone by ensuring adequate renovation of tracks, signal systems and engines and bogies on an ongoing basis and having adequate manpower in service at any point of time. The suburban local trains in cities such as Mumbai continue to be death traps, mainly due to overcrowding of compartments. This is ironically when comfort is being added to modes of travel incurring heavy costs for transport systems like monorail and metro trains.

The recent train accidents in various parts of the country embarrassed the railways as a service provider, prompting the rail minister offer to resign. Travel safety has to be one of our national priorities and should not be considered merely a “moral responsibility” of a minister, neither should it end with fixing responsibility on some employees when something untoward happens.

Some of us have noticed the recent shift from a “happy journey” to “safe and comfortable journey” in recent years. This is also a sad reminder that people have started worrying about travel safety. From pedestrians on the footpath to the executives sitting in business class seats of international airlines, eveyone needs to be assured of safety in normal circumstances.

M G Warrier   Mumbai