Monday, June 28, 2010
To make people aware about the possible danger of mishaps at unmanned level crossing, railways have launched an SMS campaign. A senior Railway Ministry official said, “The SMS campaign involves sending of safety precaution message to the local populace around the unmanned level crossing.”
The text message in English and Hindi are educative in nature and appeals to drivers of buses and tractors, to the road users and others residing near the unmanned level crossing to take necessary precaution while communicating to them. The official said, “Since majority of the people have mobile phones these days, we decided to use the SMS mode for our safety campaign.”
Messages which are sent to the target audiences are like “look around and only if no train is approaching then proceed ahead, stop at the unmanned level crossing.” There are at presently 35,363 level crossing in the railway network, and 17, 954 are unmanned, out of them.
The official said, “Accidents occur at unmanned level crossing primarily due to inadequate precautions by the road users who fail to observe mandatory sign boards, signals and basic traffic rules.” Over the last five years though train accidents at such crossing have marginally decreased from 65 in 2005 to 62 in 2009-10, still a large number of mishaps are been witnessed.
The officials also added, “Besides SMS campaign, we are also distributing leaflets, pamphlets and poster in markets, petrol pumps around the crossing as part awareness campaign”. At unmanned crossing with the help of state governments railways have also undertaken measures to construct ROBs (road overbridges) and RUBs (road underbridges).
It was about 250 such ROBs and RUBs were commissioned in 2009 – 10 under various schemes and in 2010 -11 more and more such projects being planned. The official said, “We are enhancing the pace of manning of unmanned level crossing with an ambition to eliminate all unmanned crossing in the next five years.”
