KP’s unique initiative!

In order to educate bikers about safe overtaking, the Kolkata Police’s Traffic Department has taken a unique step. The Kolkata Police have decided to give the errant bikers of the city a short lesson on blind spots of bigger vehicles instead of detaining them. The officers are making the bikers sit on the driver’s seat of a large vehicle like bus or truck to make them aware of the blind spots around the vehicle. According to the officials of the Police force, this would help the bikers to have a better understanding of how to overtake a vehicle like a bus or a truck. But what exactly are these blind spots? A blind spot in a vehicle is an area around the vehicle that cannot be directly observed by the driver while controlling the vehicle. Blind spots exist in comparatively bigger range of vehicles like busses, trucks, etc. Even rear- and side-view mirrors can’t help the drivers controlling a large vehicle if a smaller vehicle gets in its blind spot. For this, the bikers should keep enough distance while overtaking a larger vehicle since most of the time the driver of the bigger vehicle isn’t even aware of the bike or a small vehicle overtaking them. A senior officer of the traffic guard said, “If a driver cannot see a vehicle next to him, s/he is more likely to crash into the other vehicle when switching lanes. Especially for drivers of large vehicles, like buses and trucks, it gets impossible when a biker tries to overtake from either side of the vehicle, staying very close. The same is applicable even when a pedestrian try to run across the road in front of a bus. In these cases, the driver is often not at complete fault and the pedestrian or biker often has no clue about the blind spot”.