Studies undertaken on two road stretches in Andhra Pradesh during the last couple of years, as part of a pilot project funded by the World Bank, helped in formulating strategies to minimise road accidents and road safety interventions like road re-engineering in Andhra Pradesh.
The first-ever national workshop on road safety, being organised to implement the Brasilia Declaration on Road Safety, here on August 19 and 20, would see road safety experts from different States of the country as also from abroad to discuss various issues like the need to improve laws, enforcement, infrastructure modifications and improvement of vehicles, Deputy Transport Commissioner (IT) L.S.M. Ramasree said at a media conference along with DTC (Visakhapatnam) S. Venkateswara Rao here on Sunday.
The two-day workshop, being organised by the Government of Andhra Pradesh with the assistance of the World Bank, and the cooperation of the Government of India, would discuss ways and means to improve road safety and to achieve the objective of the Brasilia Declaration to reduce the road accident deaths by 50 per cent.
Ms. Ramasree said that the Government of AP had sanctioned Rs.10 crore to the AP Transport Department towards road safety, which was an indication of the seriousness of the State government in minimising road accidents in the State. She said that studies had revealed that 13 States in India accounted for 83.6 per cent of the share in road accident deaths in the country during 2015.
UP tops in accident deaths
Uttar Pradesh with 17,666, Tamil Nadu with 15,642 and Maharashtra with 13,212 deaths occupied the top three positions, while AP with 8,297 deaths occupied the 7th position ahead of Gujarat and Telangana. It was all the more unfortunate that the accident deaths were occurring in the most productive age group of 15-29 years. Mr. Venkateswara Rao briefed on the changes in the law made to protect Good Samaritans, who shift road accident victims to the hospital and the importance of the ‘Golden hour’ in saving the lives of accident victims.
The workshop would be inaugurated by Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu and Union Minister for Road Transport, Highways and Shipping Nitin Gadkari would be the chief guest at the inaugural session.
State government has sanctioned
Rs. 10 crore for
road safety
L.S.M. Ramasree
Deputy Transport Commissioner
