With road accidents claiming the life of over 4,000 people every year in the State despite stepped-up enforcement and awareness programmes, the Motor Vehicles Department (MVD) has readied a curriculum in tandem with the Kerala Road Safety Authority (KRSA) and the National Transportation Planning and Research Centre (NATPAC) to make road safety and ethics an integral part of the higher secondary school syllabus.
This will equip students to obtain driving licence as soon as they complete Plus Two, having learnt everything they need to know to get learner’s licence at the school level itself, says S. Sreejith, Transport Commissioner.
“This catch-them-young initiative will cover different aspects of road safety, how human error leads to accidents, and also how not to fall prey to road rage. The need to accord priority to the safety of pedestrians too will be covered. With this, the hope is that the next generation will imbibe road safety much better than their elders,” he says.
The curriculum will be handed over by Minister for Transport Antony Raju to General Education Minister V. Sivankutty on September 28. The relevant sections of the Kerala Motor Vehicle Rules will be amended to enable this transformation to obtain learners licence as soon as one turns 18 years, it is learnt.
A bulk of the inputs for the curriculum was provided by the KRSA and NATPAC. It is hoped that it will be included in the coming year’s syllabus.
MVD sources say the development gains relevance since students are purchasing electric and other vehicles below 50 cc once they turn 16 as driving licence is not needed to ride them.
“They thus need to be taught different aspects of road safety and road ethics as part of their syllabus, since many of them are getting involved in accidents and also because an alarming ten times the number of fatalities suffer permanent disability every year in Kerala,” they say.
