The 56 Regional Transport Officers and 406 Motor Vehicle Inspector Unit offices in the State are on the job of identifying accident prone spots across the State and ensuring engineering re-modification on the roads to reduce accidents, said M. Rajaram, Transport Commissioner on Tuesday.
He was talking to The Hindu on the sidelines of the Training Programme on “Self-Audit of Tax collection, Improving Accounting Systems and Road Safety,” organised at Coimbatore. Deputy Transport Commissioner K.N. Uthayanun, RTOs and department officials from various parts of the State took part in the programme.
Mr. Rajaram said that going by the previous accident statistics frequent accident prone pockets that accounted for fatality are being listed out. Initial assessment indicated that there could be 1,500 such black spots on major roads in the State.
In such places, Mr. Rajaram said that road engineering would be revisited to make the stretch more motorist-friendly in terms of visibility and manoeuvrability. If there are narrow culverts, they would be widened. The focus would also be on availability of lighting and caution boards/sign boards.
The Transport Department would be working in close co-ordination with Highways Department and other agencies concerned in ensuring remedial measures to bring down the accident rate and fatality in such spots.
Mr. Rajaram said that the entire exercise would be completed by June 15. Transport Commissioner pointed out that there is an average growth of ten per cent year-on-year in terms of vehicular population. Infrastructural growth was taking place but it was not at the pace in which the vehicular population was growing. The Commissioner also pointed out that now there are good roads which tempts motorists to drive faster. Now the vehicles are light and these factors too contributed for the increase in accidents.
The Transport Department was not only sustaining but also enhancing its focus on four E's of road safety i.e., Engineering, Education and Enforcement and the latest E is the emergency care.
