TRAFFIC: Steer Clear of an Accident site

You must not run away from a site if you have caused an accident and should wait for the police to arrive, while you must not stop near an accident and should let the police do its work. This needs to be the driving rule of every person on the road. It is human curiosity that whenever someone else is in adversity on the road and is either
the victim of an accident, people would like to watch how the calamity pans out. But this curiosity also often results in what may be called ‘collateral damage’ when one of the spectators also inadvertently gets involved in the accident. Curiosity has not only killed cats as the saying goes but human beings as well. As a rule one should only stop at the site of an accident if it has just happened, the police are nowhere in sight and there is nobody helping the injured. In such an eventuality, to assist the injured by way of first aid, resuscitation etc. it makes sense to stop by the wayside, contact the traffic police control room and call an ambulance if required. Up to this point any help extended to those in
distress and in need of urgent medical attention is welcome. But once police arrive, one must leave the area for them to cordon it off, examine the site, oversee the rescue operation etc. Your role as a good citizen ends there. If you linger around beyond that point it means you are a hindrance. Indeed it is the curiosity in most of us which prompts us to slow down – or even stop – near a traffic accident to “just see what happened” at a time when there might already be a crowd of pedestrians and bystanders watching the scene. It is this unnecessary and unwarranted curiosity on the part of drivers and bystanders which ultimately clogs traffic, creates a jam, and slows the flow of vehicles, thus leading to road rage, blaring of horns and chaos. It also adds enormously to traffic police
work which, in such a scenario, has to take on the additional responsibility of controlling and organising the movement of vehicles rather than fully concentrating on the rescue operation and investigation. In the worst-case scenarios, the crawling traffic has led to some vehicles being driven by the ‘curious’ getting involved in accidents resulting in injuries which can even be fatal thereby adding another distressing dimension to the already harried traffic police. So when you next see an accident, steer clear of the scene to let police concentrate fully on what they are supposed to do rather than distract them to the extent that they have to all the time divide their attention on two fronts – the accident site and the crawling traffic.