Several children had a narrow escape when the school bus they were travelling rammed into a vehicle while the driver tried to swerve the bus to avert collision with a dumper at Indira Chowk in Rudrapur of Udham Singh Nagar district on Thursday.
As the scared children screamed for help, the locals rushed in and informed the police about the same.
Some of the children reportedly sustained minor injuries. Later police took them home. Police said that the incident happened due to over-speeding.
A penalty of Rs250 was slapped on the driver of the school bus and was warned against indulging in over-speeding in future.
Many say that the meagre amount of the penalty and a warning are not enough, given the seriousness of the incident. “It is frightful to imagine what would have happened to the school children if reckless driving resulted in an accident,” says an observer.
Notably, the district administrative and the police officers have asked the school authorities to ensure that the safety and security of the children are not compromised when they are travelling in school buses.
Statistics from the National Crime Records Bureau shows that almost 43 children die in road accidents across the country each day and the children below the age of 18 years who die in road accidents make up 10.5 percent of all fatalities.
For instance, as many as 15,633 children were killed in road accidents across India in 2015, seven times more than the number of children who lost their lives to crimes like murder and foeticide.Injuries from accidents involving school buses are a shade over 1 per cent. In other words, roughly 80,000 children suffer injuries on the roads every year.
Children below the age of 18 killed in road accidents account for about 10.5 percent of all road accident fatalities.