Foggy Mornings | Driving slow and observing caution, key to safety

For last several days, most parts of Srinagar city and several other areas in Kashmir are enveloped with dense fog in the morning. The fog leads to poor visibility and makes driving difficult. Under such poor visibility there are chances of road accidents. There is a need to switch over to necessary safety measures while driving in fog.

The headlights have to be kept on and the speed of the vehicles must be slow as per the requirement, to avoid collision with other vehicles or to avoid hitting the pedestrians crossing the roads. These measures are important on all the major and other roads particularly on highways, hit by the fog.

The speedily moving vehicles particularly the trucks on highways pose threat to the lives of those inside these vehicles and to also others moving on the roads in foggy conditions. The vehicles including cabs carrying the children from their homes to schools have to be extra cautious. It has been noticed that the cabs carrying school children and even the school buses drive very fast. The over-speeding has to be avoided at all costs.

It is the responsibility of the drivers of such vehicles to ensure safety of school children by driving safely. The parents of the children must also ask the drivers not to over-speed, and more particularly during the foggy mornings. The school authorities too must tell the drivers of their school buses not to put lives of children to any kind of danger due to over-speeding. After the recent tragic incident in Doda, the traffic police department has swung into action in a big way particularly in Jammu to strictly deal with the drivers violating road safety measures. Such drives should be launched extensively in Kashmir also.

Those driving without the required driving licences will have to be strictly dealt with. And the licence holding drivers, violating traffic rules, too must be dealt the same way. Those resorting to over-loading in passenger buses too have to be made accountable. All steps have to be taken to prevent the occurrence of road accidents. The foggy conditions have added to the challenges on the road. Safe driving in fog can prevent mishaps on roads. Strictly adhering to such steps is in the best interests of those traveling at that time.