Twitter
Advertisement

Bad footpaths force jaywalking in Bangalore

If you take a walk around the city, you will realise that most of the time you will be forced to walk on the road despite a footpath existing alongside. One cannot simply blame the pedestrians...

Latest News
article-main
FacebookTwitterWhatsappLinkedin

Let alone the violations committed by motorists, Bangalore’s bigger problem is about those committed by the pedestrians themselves despite mostly them turning out to be victims when they resort to this kind of a traffic violation—jaywalking.

When DNA dissected the problem, we found that the problem is actually forced upon the people; and which is why even the traffic police nowadays give a blind eye to pedestrians carelessly walking on the roads without a care about being possibly run down by speeding vehicles.

If you take a walk around the city, you will realise that most of the time you will be forced to walk on the road despite a footpath existing alongside. And then, you will realise that therein lies the problem about jaywalking, and why Bangalore pedestrians “have it in their blood” to walk on the roads even where there are wide footpaths provided by the civic agencies to walk on.

Most footpaths are either encroached upon or obstructed by ongoing civic works that take an eternity to be completed. At other places (and this seems to be an accepted practice in Bangalore), huge electric transformers sit on footpaths, often partly sticking out on the roads to force even law-abiding pedestrians to step out on the road to offer their lives on a platter to oncoming speeding motorists.

And who better than the top boss of the traffic police to admit to this. “Jaywalking is because of no proper footpaths across Bangalore. Unless proper footpaths are provided, we (the traffic police) cannot stop pedestrians from walking on the roads. It is not fair on our part to book cases against pedestrians when spaces that are provided for them are not fit to be walked on,” said additional commissioner of police (traffic), MA Saleem, adding that some roads in Bangalore have no footpaths at all.
“Jaywalking also slows down the movement of vehicle traffic although the roads have enough space for the vehicles to ply on,” he said. “City is lacking footpaths and every authority concerned is aware of it. We don’t need to recommend improving footpaths to them because they know what they have to do.”

Saleem was mainly referring to the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), which is responsible for providing fit footpaths. BBMP officials, on their part, blamed the situation on the need to carry out maintenance works, which was obstructing the footpaths.

But because of this issue falling between the stools of two departments (responsibility of maintaining footpaths is with BBMP while enforcing anti-jaywalking lies with the traffic police), the jaywalking problem has become rampant across Bangalore: There is not a single intersection of a total of over 34,000 intersections in Bangalore where the traffic police are seriously enforcing penalties against jaywalkers anymore despite finding them everywhere.

The Karnataka Traffic Control Act (1960) prescribes a court fine. The fine amount depends on the magistrate before whom the jaywalkers are produced. Saleem said the traffic police used to book cases against jaywalkers till 2006-07 only on MG Road and produce violators before the magistrate. After that, a sympathetic traffic police have been letting the violators off the hook.

Unfortunately, this problem over lack of footpaths is evolving Bangalorean pedestrians into programmed jaywalkers. According to traffic police inspectors who DNA spoke to, jaywalkers do not wish to walk on the footpaths although in some places there are good enough footpaths. “When a lower-ranked policemen deployed on duty ask jaywalkers to make space for motorists by using the footpaths, they get into arguments with them as they are no longer booking cases against them,” said a traffic police inspector. 

However, the fact remains that when used in the technical sense, jaywalking specifically refers to violation of pedestrian traffic regulations and laws, and is therefore illegal.

It is widely known that in many countries regulations on jaywalking do not exist, and even the concept of jaywalking is an unknown concept.

But in India—and Bangalore, in particular, because of the mushrooming population—at least, from the welfare point of view jaywalking needs to be nailed if road deaths need to be brought down.

And it should be the joint responsibility of the traffic police and the civic agencies.

Find your daily dose of news & explainers in your WhatsApp. Stay updated, Stay informed-  Follow DNA on WhatsApp.
Advertisement

Live tv

Advertisement
Advertisement