Adhikari proposes ‘no helmet, no petrol’ drive in West Bengal

He was speaking in the programme where Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee launched the “Safe Drive Save Life” campaign on Friday.

Adhikari said that he would propose to introduce a system following discussion with petroleum dealers that they will not give petrol if a person comes to refill his or her two-wheeler without putting on a helmet. He placed his proposal before the Chief Minister.

He said that the awareness of people is necessary to bring a change in the scenario and make the attempts of the government, a successful one. Thus, the steps like “no helmet, no petrol” will help in making people understand the risks that they may face if they do not follow traffic norms.

He further added two weeks ago, he took data from Burdwan district authorities on giving driving license to people. “Around 2,434 had applied for license till May 16 and only 25 were rejected. 

Everyone else had passed the driving test and got their license. It is unbelievable. The success rate can never be so high. We must be stricter in giving driving license,” he said.

In a bid to bring down the rash driving among public buses, Adhikari said rationalisation of routes would be undertaken and racing between the buses to get more passengers will be curbed once the rationalisation process is over.

He said that the Chief Minister has already completed the main task to ensure better traffic movement in the past five years by constructing smooth roads. “Now our next task is to make the “Safe Drive Save Life” campaign successful to ensure that road accidents come down,” he said.

“In many cases we find that helpers drive goods vehicles. Being untrained they fail to control vehicles and it leads to accident” he said maintaining that there is a need to have more breath analysers to curb the menace of drunk driving.