Women cab drivers soon on roads, courtesy Delhi Police

In the aftermath of the Dec 5 rape in a cab by its driver, the Delhi Police have selected 115 women from poor families to be trained to work as drivers with various cab services.

This initiative has been taken by officials of the north police district, one of the 11 in the national capital, under whose jurisdiction the recent rape of a woman executive by the driver of US-based Uber cab service took place. The news sent shock waves across the nation with the Dec 16, 2012 gang rape still fresh in public mind.

The accused Shiv Kumar Yadav, who was found to be a serial offender, was arrested and is currently lodged in Tihar jail.

"We have picked 115 women from various slums who are ready to become cab drivers in Delhi. These women will undergo three months of training and the first batch will begin soon," Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police Brijender Kumar Yadav told IANS.

"We have kept online booking services in the loop so that it would be easier for us to induct these trained women drivers at these cab companies. We will train them and in a way it would be a good platform for them to serve their family as well," he said.

After training, these women, aged between 18 and 25 years, will be issued driving licences and licences for commercial vehicles from the transport authority.

Once the training and certification is complete, the companies will interview them and would hire them accordingly.

Yadav also told IANS that the companies had told police that the working women feel more "secure" while travelling in a vehicle driven by a woman.

Only six cab services - Easy Cab, Mega Cab, Meru Cab, Chanson Cab, Yo Cab and Air Cab - have so far licences to operate radio taxis in the city. Delhi government had banned Uber, an online cab booking service soon after its driver was found to be involved in the rape.

"We have also contacted several driving schools who will provide them training," Yadav said.

"To ensure that these women drivers are capable to defend themselves while on road, they will be given self-defence classes that will also be held during these three months," he said.

Apart from this, the training will also teach them how to use pepper spray efficiently and lock themselves in the car, if they face any attack.

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Driving into a man’s world

K. Radha is Madurai’s first lady motor driving instructor. She may be in a minority on the city’s congested roads but she stands out in her uncommon job

Radha deftly steers her way through the rush-hour traffic on the busy Goripalayam Road and waits for the signal to turn green. Suddenly a bus comes from behind and scrapes past forcing her to tilt her two-wheeler. “You want to run over me? Let me see your guts,” she shouts at the driver, who glowers at her. A young girl shouts from behind, “This is the driving school madam.” Others waiting at the traffic signal turn to take a look at her.

Both agitated and happy, Radha buzzes off. “When men see a woman driving, they try to take advantage. Sometimes I ignore them but often I feel like giving it back to the guy,” she says. But when her students recognise and acknowledge her, she feels happy enough to dream big.

“The day will come when majority of the drivers on the city roads would have been trained by me,” says Radha, who since 1999 has trained 7,000 women in car and scooter driving. Male students so far add up to a little less than 1,000, she informs.

With all her family members in the job of driving, sitting behind the wheels is in her blood. But nobody taught her anything about driving. She shocked everybody when as a 14-year-old, she asked one of her uncles one day where the brakes and the accelerator were in the scooter and simply kicked off.

“There was no turning back since then,” she laughs.

Radha started earning pocket money by teaching the girls in her locality the basics of driving a two-wheeler. Her parents chose to marry her off early to a workshop mechanic who surprised her by asking her to ride his motorbike. “I loved the freedom of zipping around. It gave me a sense of power,” she says.

Radha recalls her first student, a young bank employee from the neighbourhood who agreed to pay her Rs.250 for 10 classes of an hour each. “I always wanted to become a teacher and sensed an opportunity to give lessons in driving!” says Radha.

The concept of a lady driving teacher was alien in Madurai. She offered her services to pick up and drop back the girl students safely after the class. Parents started trusting her with their daughters. Young women working in the city started flocking to her. But she had only one scooter and could accommodate six students a day.

When her husband passed away in 2004, the pressure to earn more fell on her. Leaving her two small kids with her mother, Radha went to Namakkal for training in bus and lorry driving. After obtaining her heavy vehicles driving license, she drove TNSTC buses for two years. In 2006, she joined the Gopalkrishna Driving School in Anaiyur and became the only lady instructor in town. Savings from her salary and a loan enabled her to buy her first two-wheeler – a Bajaj Sunny! It brought back sunshine in my life, she says, as her students started growing.

After her driving school hours, Radha started taking private classes. As long as the girls and their families had no problem, she and her students would be out on the road at the break of dawn and as late as 11 in the night. Over a period of time Radha added half-a-dozen more two-wheelers and two four-wheelers to her fleet to break off into her own Radha Driving School, the first one owned by a woman. With pride she displays all documents and says, “I am living part of my dream.” She now dreams of owning a bus.

Radha, who also trained the city’s first batch of female auto rickshaw drivers, works from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily even though she has hired two extra drivers. Requests for classes before 10 a.m. and after 6 p.m. are handled by Radha, who works on Sundays too. On an average, she trains 30 women in car and another 25 girls on the scooter per month.

Though women have less knowledge of car parts and functioning, they are more attuned to safety on roads. I can raise my voice if they make a mistake, she notes, but with men it is different.

As the only lady instructor in the region giving training in scooter driving, Radha gets her students even from Sivagangai, Ramnad, Melur and also Chennai. “You feel empowered when you drive, she says, I see so much change in the body language and speech of my students.”

By building other women’s confidence, Radha has got an identity today. Though the first, she is no longer the only female car driving instructor in Madurai. Three other women have entered the field but she sees no competition.

“The male owners of other driving schools in the city harass me sometimes because they think I will take away all their clients,” she laughs. But nothing worries the feisty Radha. Dressed in a bright sari, she breezes past in her Maruti Alto amidst a scene of cheerful chaos on traffic packed roads. I ask her how she manages on a scooter pillion riding with her students. “Only today I have dressed up for the interview,” she smiles. “On other days I don’t even find time to eat my meals.” Radha enjoys driving and knows how to hold her own among men. But she is also aware of the perils of her job. “I have to guard the safety of my students while working in an openly hostile field.”

Wake County schools warn about state elimination of driver’s education funding

 CARY — Wake County school leaders warned Tuesday that the state’s elimination of funding for driver’s education could endanger public safety and will lead to higher costs for parents and taxpayers to fund the required program.

After the fiscal year ends in June, the General Assembly plans to phase out the $26 million it now provides for driver’s education. But the state is still requiring school systems to offer the program. The school board made restoration of state funding for driver’s education one of the items for state lawmakers’ consideration when the General Assembly reconvenes in January.

“I’m suggesting the legislature honor the bargain struck after the Depression, where the state funds the operation of the schools,” school board member Bill Fletcher said.

Replacing funding for driver’s education is just one of several items that the school board included in its legislative agenda approved on Tuesday. Other items include requests to increase funding for teacher pay, school construction, technology and pre-kindergarten.

“Driver education is fully funded in this year’s budget, and future budgeting decisions on this and other programs have not been made,” state Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger’s office said in a statement Tuesday. “Those conversations will happen as part of the appropriations process when a new General Assembly goes into session next year.”

Under North Carolina’s graduated licensing program for young drivers, driver education class is mandatory for anyone younger than 18 who applies for a learner’s permit. Students get 30 hours of classroom instruction and six hours behind the wheel.

Once they turn 18, teens can get a license without the class by passing Division of Motor Vehicles tests.

State law requires school districts to offer driver’s education to every student in public, private and home-schools in their districts who wants the program. In Wake, 12,000 teens annually go through the district’s program, which is contracted to Jordan Driving School.

“There are other families, 10,000 of them out there right now, waiting to see what decisions we make on this,” school board Chairwoman Christine Kushner said.

Driver’s education used to be free for families. But now districts are allowed to charge a fee to help offset cuts in state funding since 2011.

After July 1, no state funding is set aside. Districts will be allowed to charge as much as $65 per student, $10 more than the current amount. But school officials say that $10 increase won’t offset the $191 per student that the state provides.

Drew Cook, Wake’s senior director for high school programs, said the district plans to charge $65 per student next fiscal year. But to meet demand, he said, school administrators are proposing to budget $2.5 million to run the program.

School board members speculated that the higher cost may cause some teens to not take driver’s education, which they said would affect all drivers. Participation dropped statewide after the program was no longer free.

Devin Tanner, Wake’s coordinating teacher for driver education, said statistics show a higher instance of fatal collisions for people who don’t go through driver’s education.

“Do we really want to see it go away to find out what the consequences might be, whether they’re positive or negative?” Tanner said.

Even though the state cut goes into effect next fiscal year, school officials say they’re holding off on registering new students for April and May because they’re worried they won’t complete the program until after June 30.

Fletcher called driver’s education another example of state leaders shifting responsibility for state-mandated programs to the counties.

“Our public needs to know that there is no other place to get money except sales taxes and property taxes,” he said. “So every transfer that comes through the county has an implication that locally we’re going to be asking our citizens to pay more.”

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/12/16/4408109_wake-county-schools-warn-about.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

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Wausau East wins $25,000 grant in safe-driving campaign

Wausau East High School has won a $25,000 grant from State Farm thanks to students who participated in an online safe-driving campaign.
The grant was bestowed through the insurance company's Celebrate My Drive contest, in which students logged on to a website, answered a couple of questions related to safe driving and committed to safe driving habits. The website, www.celebratemydrive.com, encourages young drivers to keep two hands on the steering wheel and two eyes on the road as a way to limit distractions such as cell phone use.
Celebrate My Drive aims to be another reminder to young drivers about the importance of safe driving habits in minimizing the number of crashes among teens. "It's really about encouraging our youth to be more aware of safe ways to drive, the correct ways to drive," said Shirley Jehn, a Wausau State Farm agent who presented the $25,000 check to school officials Thursday afternoon.
Schools with the most participation in the contest received the grant awards. Wausau East was among the top 50 from the 3,283 high schools from across the country that participated in Celebrate My Drive.
The contest came at a time when safety and poor driving habits have become an issue in the school's parking lots, said Chris Budnik, an associate principal at the school. She said speeding, driving the wrong way on one-way streets and reckless driving, such as spinning donuts, have become an increasing problem, so the timing of the contest was appropriate.
Some of the $25,000 will be used to create a safe-driving campaign in the school and to help pay for incentives in the school's positive-behavior program. Other chunks of the money will go to student organizations, such as the Key Club, Student Council and Career Club, which all helped promote participation in the contest.
And finally, Budnik said, $1,000 will be donated to Wausau food pantry The Neighbors' Place.