NASHIK: With increasing number of youth getting killed in road accidents, the city police have decided to undertake an extensive road safety awareness campaign across the city this year to sensitize college students.Police said that of the 217 accident victims in the city last year, over 20% were youth.Commissioner of police Ravinder Kumar Singal said, "Over the past three years, we have taken awareness drives in schools to sensitize students about the importance of following traffic rules so that they pass the message onto their parents. Now, we have decided to focus on the youth as they form the maximum number road accident victims."Singal said youths were also the ones who are found violating traffic rules. "We would be reaching out to students in over 100 colleges and would also change our approach in sensitizing them so that they understand the need for observing traffic rules."He was speaking on the backdrop of the 30th Road Safety Campaign inaugurated by the regional transport office (RTO) and the city and rural police. The event was attended by over 2,000 school students.Regional transport officer Bharat Kalaskar said this year the theme of the campaign would be an appeal to the people to be road Samaritans and help accident victims, which will bring down the number of deaths in accidents.Over 20 people who helped save the lives of accident victims, without worrying about legal hassles, were felicitated by police and RTO officials.Sanjay Darade, SP, Nashik rural said that they have launched a helmet drive throughout the district from February 1 and the motorists were in full support of the drive, unlike some other cities where people were opposing the helmet compulsion.The RTO had put up 600 best pictures of the drawing competitions conducted by them for school students ahead of the campaign.

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