JOIN US The area around Esteem Mall junction in Hebbal, the site of the Thursday’s horrific accident, is dotted by a number of educational institutions. Students of these institutions risk their lives on a daily basis by frequenting the area with no pedestrian safety.
According to a rough estimate, around 10,000 students use this stretch of road on any given day. Arpita Janardhan, student of Sindhi College, who was killed in the accident, was one of the 2,000 students from the college who regularly make use of the road. Presidency College, located next to Sindhi College has around 3,000 students.
Concerned about the safety of her college students, Prof Pallavi Vinod, Principal, Sindhi College, had highlighted the need to bring about safety measures with government authorities. However, it was not heeded. “Ideally they should have constructed either an underpass or a skywalk in this area due to the sheer density of people’s movement, especially that of students. Besides our students, there are five to six schools in the area whose students regularly use this road,” she said.
Savitha, final year BCom student of Sindhi college, said: “Vehicles move even before the signal at pedestrian crossing turns green. A skywalk is therefore a grave necessity here. Our management has been demanding a skywalk for the last many years. But no action has been taken.”
Sindhi High School, Vidya Niketan, Kensri School are some of the schools that are located in the area. A staff from Vidya Niketan said the area was very dangerous due to the speeding cars who show scant respect for traffic rules.” The school has as many as 1,250 students, many of them use the public transport.
With as many as 2,250 students, Sindhi High School has huge number of its students and teachers using Kempapura junction as a commute point. Although the school provides vehicles to students, there are those who catch buses from there. “We have written to local police asking them to depute one or two policemen near the junction at least during the peak hours. Sometimes they are present and at other times they are not. We depute our own staff to see that the children are safe,” said Vimla Mallappa, principal of the school. She was witness to a similar incident in the area about six months ago.
Not just the area around Kempapura Road, the long stretch of road from the Hebbal flyover to Mekhri Cirlce has a number of education institutes, such as Atria Institute of Technology, Brindavan College and Dairy Science College. Students of these institutes have little options to cross the road.