LUCKNOW: With recent road-rage incidents involving women triggering renewed concerns over their safety on the road, Lucknow traffic police has taken its safety outreach beyond checking vehicles and traffic violations, with officers now stopping at toll plazas to ask women travellers a more basic question: Was your journey safe?




The traffic police on Saturday-Sunday night began a special ‘Meet & Greet’ initiative at four toll plazas around Lucknow, combining vehicle checks with direct conversations with women travelling at night. 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.




DCP (Traffic) Raveena Tyagi said the initiative was aimed at bringing road safety and women’s safety under one broader safety framework, particularly during night travel.




“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 said.




The toll plazas were chosen as they serve 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 stoppage at these points also gives police an opportunity to interact with passengers without significantly disrupting their journey.




The initiative also sought to make the interaction less formal. Women traffic police personnel approached vehicles and asked passengers about their experience rather than waiting for them to report a problem.




“Road safety is not limited to preventing accidents or checking traffic violations. A safe journey also means that every passenger, particularly a woman travelling at night, feels secure and knows that help is available,” Tyagi said.




The Gurugram incident has brought particular attention to the vulnerability of women riders during confrontations on the road. In that case, the woman alleged that a car followed her before hitting her motorcycle; police subsequently added an attempt-to-murder charge to the FIR.




In Lucknow too, a recent incident involving a woman and a car following an altercation brought attention to how confrontations on the road can escalate. While the circumstances were different from the Gurugram road-rage case, the incident has added to concerns around women’s safety during road journeys.




Against this backdrop, the traffic police’s toll-plaza intervention places emphasis on an aspect that routine vehicle checking may not capture: the passenger’s experience of safety during a journey.




Officials also provided women with information about the 112 emergency response number and 1090 women’s helpline, asking them not to hesitate to seek assistance in case of harassment, insecurity or an emergency.




The road-safety component of the campaign continued alongside the outreach. Police checked 189 vehicles across the four toll plazas and issued four challans for driving under the influence of alcohol.




The campaign is scheduled to continue on Sunday night as well, the traffic department said.