After 38 years with the Tamil Nadu Police, 61-year-old N. Sivaji of Karur is now on a mission. He is on a pan Tamil Nadu road safety awareness ride on his bike. He says he has witnessed enough road accidents that claimed lives and left people injured. Many of these accidents were because people did not follow road rules. So many deaths and injuries could have been avoided if only they had followed the rules, he says. Hearing impairment and painful knees have not come in the way of his 75-day awareness drive. He began the campaign in Karur on August 15. After covering many districts, the retired policeman reached Coimbatore on Tuesday night – from The Nilgiris. He headed off to Pollachi on Wednesday.
Sivaji puts on his helmet and hits the road around 8 a.m. He plays an audio recording on road safety at market places, schools and colleges and at bus stands. He also distributes pamphlets before starting for thenext village or town.
He rides a 100cc bike fitted with a heavy metal box behind his seat, with pictures of common road violations that caused accidents on it. Inside the box are a few thousand awareness pamphlets with tips on avoiding accidents. The bike is also fitted with a microphone. “The rear view mirrors are of great help when I am unable to hear honking heavy vehicles behind me,” says Sivaji who has total hearing loss in one ear and almost total in the other.
Still, he covers a little more than 100 kms a day. By the time he completes his marathon ride, he would have covered 8,675 kilometres.Earlier Efforts
This is not the first time Sivaji has got on to his bike for a cause. Moved by the communal violence and bomb blasts in Coimbatore in the late 1990s, he went on a nation wide anti terrorism awareness in 2000. He took 100 days to visit all the States asking the public to help the police put an end to all forms of extremism. It took him 100 days to do this.
On March 9, 1994, he cycled from Karur to Chennai in 14 hours and met Chief Minister Jayalalithaa.
Date : Septemper 15, 2015