Coimbatore traffic park to help kids become better drivers

Sprawling on 1.2 acres at the Police Recruits School Ground on Balasundaram Road, the park was renovated with basic facilities twice over the last two decades but remained underutilized. The park was closed from October last year and was reopened with several attractive and educative features that would help children get real time experience of using the road. 

Digital signals, pavements, bus stops, signs and symbols and all other aspects of a ‘proper’ road have been replicated in the park. At one corner of the park, a theoretical education room has been established, where the children will undergo basic education on traffic rules before they are taken on a tour through the park. The facility, which can accommodate 50 students at a time also has a two-wheeler simulator. 

A four-wheeler simulator will be installed soon. The children can also ride mini bike and bicycles inside the traffic park. The park will be open six days a week from 10 am to 5 pm. Along with the inauguration of the park, Honda Motorcycles and Scooter India Private Limited, the major contributor for the park renovation, also launched ‘Dream Riding’ initiative, to help women become independent scooter riders in just four-hours. 

Yadvinder Singh Guleria, senior vice president (sales & marketing), Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India Pvt. Ltd, said that the park in Coimbatore was the 11th such children’s park the company has renovated under their corporate social responsibility (CSR) scheme in India and the first in Tamil Nadu. Speaking on the occasion, City Police Commissioner A Amalraj said that a total of 27 murders were recorded in the city last year. 

On the other hand, 300 lives were lost in road accidents. This is over 10 times more than the number of murders. “Coimbatore city has 167 kms of roads. Last year, there were 13.71 lakh vehicles in the city. While road the roads is not widened, as many as 1 lakh new vehicles are added to the city roads every year,” he said. 

According to him, close to 75 per cent of the vehicles are two-wheelers and around 45 per cent of the accidents involved two-wheelers. The Director General of Police (DGP) himself expressed concern over the alarming increase of road accidents and expressed the need to bring them down by 50 per cent,” he said. 

Amalraj expressed confidence that the traffic park would inculcate the habit of abiding to road rules among children and become better drivers in the future. Pointing out that Tamil Nadu ranks second in road accident deaths in the country next to Uttar Pradesh, he said that Coimbatore was second in terms of road deaths.