Delhi gets that fatal feeling on weekends

Delhi likes to live life dangerously when it is not working, as it has emerged out of the recent spate of accidents which have occurred over the weekends.

Delhi likes to live life dangerously when it is not working, as it has emerged out of the recent spate of accidents which have occurred over the weekends.

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A 22-year-old engineering student was killed in the early hours on Sunday after he lost control of the wheels of his speeding luxury sedan and the car hit a divider and then struck a street light and flipped over to the other side at Vikas Marg in east Delhi.

The incident came as a grim reminder to the city which boasts of the maximum vehicles in the country. Coupled with its bad record on road safety, the fact that it has a large population of youngsters who likes to push the gas pedal hard makes for a deadly cocktail.

Recent accidents have revealed that how the owners of high-end cars like to test the limits of their vehicles' horse power on the deserted roads during the dead of night.

In February, a fatal accident was reported almost every weekend.

Asked for a solution to check the trend, experts point at enhanced police deployment over the weekend, especially during night. "The only solution is to deploy more traffic police personnel on weekend nights to instill the fear of law in the minds of the reckless drivers. In London, one out of 50 drunk drivers gets caught. Here, the number is one in 15000," said Rohit Baluja, president, Institute of Road Traffic Education.

"We don't have a strategic enforcement policy like the European countries. The enforcement of traffic rule violations is done on an arbitrary basis," added Baluja.