A pilot study made on the 135 km stretch of National Highway between Renigunta and Kadapa had revealed that an alarming 240 accidents were occurring annually on the small stretch.
The project, funded by the World Bank, had recommended 11 road interventions to reduce accidents. These included straightening of the curves on the highway, introduction of w-beam structures, providing a median and putting up signages.
The result: accidents reduced by nearly 50 per cent to record 123 last year. There was, however, little for officials of the Transport Department and the Stategovernment to rejoice.
“The accidents started shifting to newer spots farther away as speed of vehicles increased on the stretch. This led the project officials to make further studies and initiate more interventions. We found that branch roads, like city and rural roads, were joining the highways perpendicularly,” AP Transport Commissioner N. Balasubrahmanyam told The Hindu on Tuesday.
“This was resulting in vehicles, moving at high speed on the highway, hitting those joining from the branch roads, on the sides. The doors of cars and other vehicles are generally delicate and the occupants are being directly hit most of the time. A head on collision would have a lesser impact as the engines of both vehicles would take the impact of the collision to a large extent.”
“This had led us to think of scientific entry and exit from the highways. The single largest cause of accidents was ‘over speeding’ with 49 per cent of the total accidents falling in that category. This is followed by driver fatigue and road engineering. Studies conducted on the Visakhapatnam – Vijayawada stretch of National Highway revealed that 38 per cent of the total accidents in AP were occurring on this stretch,” Mr. Balasubrahmanyam said.
This was because the Vizag – Vijayawada stretch was among the first stretches laid as part of the Golden Quadrilateral. It passes through the villages instead of bypassing habitations unlike the Hyderabad – Vijayawada stretch of National Highway.
“There are already plans for expansion of the Vizag – Vijayawada stretch. We proposed to the Centre to go for elevated corridors at villages on this stretch to avoid the problem of land acquisition. We also suggested safe entry/exit from the highways and installation of remote cameras on the highways to bring down the accident rate,” he added.
