The government is planning to constitute special teams, comprising officials of Transport and police departments, to exclusively monitor traffic on highways and enforce road safety rules.
Each team of the Transport Department will have one Motor Vehicle Inspector, two Assistant MVIs, two constables and four home guards, while similar number of personnel will be deployed by the police department.
They will be equipped with laptops, interceptor vehicles, breath analysers, speed laser guns and other road safety enforcement equipment. Authorities are planning to establish nearly 100 such teams in 13 districts of the State.
Emphasis will be laid on patrolling highways passing through Vijayawada, Guntur, Kurnool, Visakhapatnam and Tirupati regions. These teams would exclusively patrol highways, especially covering accident prone areas and black spots at least two days a week.
They will submit a report on the traffic scenario and measures to be taken to control accidents in respective areas.
A decision to this effect was taken during a review meeting conducted by Chief Secretary I.Y.R. Krishna Rao at Hyderabad recently. The State government has, in principle, agreed to set up the teams and hopefully the teams would be ready in the next three months, said a Transport department official.
Towards this end, the transport and police departments have been ordered to identify black spots in the State and submit a report. Officials in the past had submitted a report identifying more than 70 ‘black spots’, areas vulnerable for accidents, in each district and these were more than 100 in a couple of districts.
“Government wants us to identify new black spots as the previous report was prepared two years ago. Once the report is ready it will be handed over to Roads and Buildings Department for initiating remedial measures to clear black spots,” the official said.
However, the transport department is faced with staff crunch and utilising additional personnel for highway patrolling would be a challenge.
