Click to play videoBangalore: For Pooja M J and Sonali Mehta, a 30 feet stretch from their school is a nightmare everyday. Their school is on a one-way road and notice-boards asking cars to slow down go unnoticed. Every evening, nearly 4,000 children cross the road with the fear of death in their shaky steps.
"Our teacher asks us to follow traffic rules, but these cars don't go by traffic rules," says Pooja.
"When the traffic police is absent, it's very difficult to cross the road," adds Sonali.
On arterial roads that have become one-ways over the last two years, it's not the driver but the pedestrian who's facing more problems. How do you cross a road, when traffic zooms at alarming speed, often refusing to stop?
Concerned parents say if there weren't one-ways, they would have more pedestrian crossings.
And it's worrying the Bangalore Police too. A pilot study of road accidents covering 25 major hospitals has been launched.
Says Additional Commissioner (Traffic), K C Ramamurthy, "The pilot study is to reduce the number of people who die on the streets. In accidents alone, 700 to 900 people die every year -- mostly pedestrians, closely followed by two-wheelers."
It's a study of accident zones, causes and prevention, that's being taken up in Bangalore, New Delhi and Pune - three cities that top the charts in accidents.
You don't have to be driving at all to meet with an accident. You can just be walking along the road and still be hit. In cities that love to be labeled fast and growing, it's the simple stroll that's becoming part of big city blues.
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