With recent road-rage incidents involving women raising concerns over their safety on roads, Lucknow traffic police has taken its safety outreach beyond checking vehicles and traffic violations, with officers stopping at toll plazas to ask women travellers a basic question: Was your journey safe?
The initiative comes amid a series of road-rage incidents involving women in different cities, including a recent case in Gurugram in which a woman biker was allegedly chased and hit by a car. The toll plazas were chosen as key entry and exit points to Lucknow, bringing in and sending out a large number of long-distance travellers, including families and women travelling at night. The brief interaction also allowed police to speak to passengers without significantly disrupting their journey. Women traffic police personnel approached vehicles and asked passengers about their experience rather than waiting for them to report a problem. The Gurugram incident has drawn attention to the vulnerability of women riders during road confrontations. In that case, the woman alleged that a car followed her before hitting her motorcycle; the police subsequently added an attempt-to-murder charge to the FIR. Also Read I Aliganj fake call centre mastermind fled an hour before police raid, Lucknow cops launch probe In Lucknow too, a recent incident involving a woman and a car following an altercation brought attention to how road confrontations can escalate.
“At the Purvanchal Expressway, Agra Expressway, Itaunja and Nigohan toll plazas, traffic police teams spoke to women passengers about their journey, whether they had faced any inconvenience or unsafe situation on the way and whether they knew how to seek police assistance if required,” the DCP added. The traffic police on Saturday night began a special ‘Meet & Greet’ initiative at four toll plazas around Lucknow, combining vehicle checks with direct conversations with women travelling at night.
