Guwahati, one of India’s fastest-growing urban centers and the nerve center of the Northeast, is battling a silent epidemic. The city’s roads—meant to connect people and power economic activity—are increasingly becoming spaces of chaos, risk, and irreversible loss. At the heart of this crisis lies a lethal mix: drunk driving, reckless speeding, and a rising culture of deadly bike stunts.
This isn’t merely a traffic problem; it’s a public safety emergency that has spiraled into a moral and societal crisis.
The Alcohol-Fueled Carnage
Despite increased crackdowns by the Guwahati Traffic Police and the Assam Police, drunk driving continues to claim lives with chilling regularity. Under current penalties, offenders may face fines up to Rs 10,000 and imprisonment—but enforcement alone isn’t enough.
In March 2025, a drunk driver lost control and crashed into a divider in Beltola. In February, a senior police officer was run over and killed by a speeding vehicle in Lalmati. These are not outliers; they reflect a disturbing pattern.
Alcohol impairs judgment, slows reaction time, and turns an ordinary vehicle into a deadly weapon. The tragedy is that every drunk driving incident is preventable—and yet the public response often lacks outrage until it becomes personal.
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When Stunts Become Suicide—and Homicide
Equally disturbing is the glamorization of bike stunts by Guwahati’s youth. From high-speed wheelies to reckless zigzagging through traffic, these acts, often fueled by social media clout-chasing, aren’t just dangerous—they’re potentially criminal. Many fall under sections of the Motor Vehicles Act related to racing, disobedience of authority, or endangering life, and can lead to jail time.
Across India, such stunts have already resulted in numerous fatalities. In one November 2024 case, two teenagers were killed in Jamui during an illegal race. Courts have begun demanding bonds as high as Rs 2 lakh to deter repeat offenders, and even the Karnataka High Court has called for specific legislation to address “wheeling.”
In Guwahati, the trend is no less deadly. Recent viral videos show car stunts in Khanapara, where three individuals were arrested, even as the Jalukbari-Khanapara stretch remains one of the city’s most dangerous zones.
The Human Cost Behind the Headlines
We often discuss road safety in numbers—accident tallies, death counts, and enforcement statistics. But behind every number is a family torn apart.
Losing a family member to a road accident is a trauma that reverberates for years. Survivors face not just grief, but guilt, financial ruin, and broken family dynamics. Children of victims struggle in school; breadwinners lost in accidents plunge families into poverty; caregivers abandon their careers to tend to the injured. The emotional toll becomes generational.
Public health systems, too, bear the weight—trauma care units, mental health services, and emergency responders are overstretched. This isn’t just a policing issue—it’s a developmental one.
Guwahati’s Numbers Demand Urgent Action
Between December 2024 and January 2025, Assam recorded a 16% decline in road fatalities—but Guwahati was the outlier. In November 2024 alone, the city saw a 31.8% increase in deaths, bucking the state trend. Historical data from 2014 shows that of 7,271 road accidents in Assam, 1,196 were from Guwahati, a city with only a fraction of the state’s population.
The Jalukbari-Lokhra-Beltola stretch, poorly lit and heavily trafficked, continues to be a high-risk zone, and yet road engineering improvements remain sluggish.
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What Must Change
Guwahati must act now—and comprehensively. Stricter law enforcement is critical, but it must be backed by public awareness, better urban infrastructure, and social responsibility. Schools, colleges, and local influencers need to speak out against stunt culture. Parents must be more accountable for the vehicles their children use. And urban planners must treat road safety not as an afterthought but as a core metric of development.
Public campaigns need to go beyond slogans. They must include survivor stories, community-led initiatives, and visible consequences for violators.
Because ultimately, this isn’t about traffic violations—it’s about lives needlessly lost, families shattered, and a city teetering on the edge of civic dysfunction.
Guwahati doesn’t need more caution signs. It needs people’s will, social consciousness, and urban empathy. The time for outrage is now—before another young life is lost to a bottle, a stunt, or a speeding engine.