UTTARAKHAND: Government officers generally work within the boundaries of files, designations and official duties. Vimal Pandey, Regional Transport Officer (Garhwal), has built a reputation for stepping beyond them when public safety is at stake.
A 2004-batch Uttarakhand Civil Services officer from Almora, Pandey’s formal responsibility is transport administration—vehicle inspections, enforcement, permits and compliance. But he has turned the post into a broader road-safety mission focused on Uttarakhand’s accident-prone hill districts.
His belief is clear: no life should be lost on the road if preventive action is possible. That belief has shaped an approach that relies as much on awareness and community engagement as on penalties. “A challan can stop a person once. Awareness can save an entire family,” he says.
Pandey argues that the deeper problem is behavioural. Many riders wear helmets to avoid fines, buckle seatbelts only near checkpoints, or allow underage children to ride two-wheelers without recognising the risks involved. The challenge, he believes, is therefore social and psychological as much as administrative. That conviction pushed him toward an unusual medium—cinema.
During the 2013 Kedarnath disaster, when he was serving as ARTO Tanakpur-Champawat and volunteering in relief operations, Pandey witnessed repeated scenes of loss and grief. The experience stayed with him and eventually led to “Young Bikers,” a full-length infotainment film that he wrote, directed and produced.
The film featured songs by Udit Narayan, Kumar Sanu, Pamela Jain and Vyapak Joshi, and carried a straightforward message against reckless riding, road rage and over-speeding. It ran house-full for two weeks in Haldwani before later becoming available on Hungama OTT. Pandey says the objective was not filmmaking itself but reaching teenagers and parents in a form they would remember.
In the hills, where roads, curves and valleys make even small errors deadly, Pandey has experimented with low-cost safety measures. While posted in Champawat, he identified dangerous bends where protective parapets were missing or inadequate. He organised the installation of tyre barriers made from discarded tyres.
The barriers were designed to soften the impact of vehicles skidding off the road and help prevent them from plunging into valleys. The same urgency has shaped his response to potholes. Although road repair is not ordinarily an RTO’s responsibility, Pandey has overseen the filling of hazardous potholes with ready-mix material on stretches where delayed action could endanger two-wheeler riders, first in Kashipur and later in parts of Garhwal. He is now working on another hill-specific idea: a bike ambulance.