Lane discipline? But where are the lanes?

It’s a study of contrasts. On one hand, you have the Bangalore traffic police struggling to kickstart its lane-discipline campaign which was supposed to begin in the first week of May. And on the other is the Disciplined Drivers’ Club (DDC), founded last year to address rash driving in the city, which has been running a similar campaign since its inception.

DDC members take a pledge to be disciplined while driving and riding, and are given stickers that show they are ‘proud members of DDC’. The club has 300 members. According to Sathya Shankaran, who founded the club along with Bheema Upadhyay, lane discipline is about correcting one’s mistakes voluntarily.

“One requires enormous will power to follow lane discipline,” he said, adding that the campaign encouraged people to correct their mistakes. “They should put up the stickers only when they are able to do so,” he said.
“It is not easy,” said Shankaran, who himself had to remove the sticker when he found that it was difficult to stick to the rules. “When I realised that I myself was making mistakes, I removed the sticker for a few weeks, learned rules again and tried to follow them. I put the sticker back only then,” he said.

While he applauded the traffic police’s initiative, he says much more needs to be done to address the issue of lane discipline. “Unless traffic engineering problems are addressed, lane discipline will be hard to follow,” he said.  “The city’s lanes are not engineered correctly. The police’s campaign to create awareness among motorists, who do not follow lane discipline, is just ‘band-aid’, unless the larger issue is addressed,” Shankaran said.

 According to Shankaran, what the BBMP’s traffic cell is doing is asphalting land and calling it a lane. “Scientific lanes have to be marked, and there have to be sign boards. If a road is three-lane wide, it has to be so all along. If it becomes a two-lane one, motorists have to be informed so they will not scramble where the three-lane road ends,” he said.

The traffic engineering cell is not following rules that they are supposed to follow. “People tend to pick up wrong driving habits and behaviours because lane rules are not clear and sometimes difficult to follow. Mistakes need to be corrected with proper roads and clear rules,” he said.

It is the people’s behaviour that DDC tried to address when it began its campaign. “We began by making people aware of their mistakes by sending them videos of best practices followed elsewhere,” he said.

After watching the videos, those who wanted to join the club had to take a pledge that they had to follow to continue to be part of the club. “Later, we sent stickers to those who learnt to follow lane discipline,” he said.

Before motorists decide to join the club, they have to make sure they can be disciplined, Shankaran said. “If they think they are not disciplined, we advise them to remove the stickers so as not to bring a bad name to the club,” he said.
 
BBMP’s apathy hits campaign
According to additional commissioner of police (traffic) MA Saleem, Bangalore traffic police was planning to start the campaign on lane discipline after 16 junctions and major roads in the city are painted so motorists know where the lane is and the direction in which it is going.

However, the BBMP is yet to paint the roads which resulted in the delay in starting the campaign. Tired of waiting for the BBMP to do its job, the traffic police have decided to go ahead with the campaign. “We have started painting the junctions though we do not have adequate resources to paint all the lanes,” said Saleem.

The traffic police started painting the BM Shri Circle at the intersection of CMH Road and 100 Feet Road three days ago, but were unable to paint other junctions due to rains. “We will continue to paint once rains settle,” he said, adding that the campaign will begin in a week.