VADODARA: Soon, the vans carrying schoolchildren will sport a unique number. The traffic police have drawn up a plan to register all the school vans and give them a specific number. The idea is to identify the number of vans that ferry school kids and monitor them to ensure safety of the children.“We are in the process of gathering the data of school vans moving around in the city. We have asked the schools to provide details of the vans that ferry students. The idea is to have a complete record of not just the drivers but also the van owners,” said Amita Vanani, ACP (traffic).“Once we get the data, we will start the process of giving a unique and short number to each van. If we want to identify or track down some van, all we have to do is feed that special number in our system. This initiative is necessary as we have to keep an eye on vans carrying schoolchildren and ensure that they follow safety norms including traffic rules,” Vanani told TOI.The traffic police had received complaints of school vans blatantly flouting traffic norms and also driving on the wrong side of the road thereby risking lives of the students in some areas. Vanani said that the school vans flouting traffic norms will be penalized and the cops may even approach the regional transport office (RTO) to suspend driving licenses of the erring drivers.“The van drivers will know that the cops have their complete record and it will have a psychological effect on them that their driving discipline is under watch. The schools too will take all precautions,” she added. The police will gather name, address, phone number of the school van drivers apart from the owner’s details and vehicle registration number.Senior police officials said that they have no idea about the total number of vans ferrying schoolchildren as of now. “Most of these vans are not registered with the RTO under the carriage permit because the fees are very high. After we gather data, we will have an idea of the number of school vans in the city,” Vanani said. The cops have already implemented a similar project of giving special numbers to autorickshaws in the city.Times View:The traffic police have conducted drives in the past to penalize drivers who overload their vans with schoolchildren. But once the drive gets over, the overloading continues. The police should crack down on the erring drivers round the year and strict action should be taken against them instead of collecting meagre penalty amount. Parents of the school kids should also be counselled so that they don’t risk their children’s lives by ferrying them in overloaded vans.

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