In a bid to curb road accidents, the State government on Thursday announced a special project to rectify road engineering defects along ‘Black Spots’ or accident-prone stretches across Tamil Nadu.
Announcing this in the budget, Finance Minister O. Panneerselvam said the fund for conducting road safety campaigns would be doubled and the exercise intensified.
Besides Rs. 65 crore for road safety measures, Chief Minister Jayalalithaa ordered allocation of Rs. 300 crore, of which Rs. 150 crore would be released in 2014-15, for attending to the ‘Black Spots’ with proper civil engineering works.
After Tamil Nadu topped the country in fatal road accidents in 2012, the State government sanctioned Rs. 60 crore a year for implementing road safety measures .
Going by the State Crime Records Bureau statistics, 16,175 persons were killed in 5,072 road accidents in 2012.
After sustained road safety campaign, the number of fatalities came down to 15,563 the next year, police sources said.
